How to change resolution on GRUB and TTY

When I use Ubuntu the resolution always was OK except tty. The resolution which was set up on GNOME or Unity was not the same on tty when I pressed eg. Ctrl + Alt +F2. Sometimes I prefer to use fullscreen tty and last time I decided to change the resolution on GRUB and tty to the native.

So let’s start!

First – restart the system: press and hold shift key and when you will see grub menu press “c” in order to go to command line. Then type “vbeinfo” and hit enter. You will see all resolutions supported by your VGA card. Remember one which is best for you and run linux normally.

Next step is editing grub config file:

sudo gedit /etc/default/grub

and add these lines:

GRUB_GFXMODE=”1440x900x32″
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=keep

Of course the “1440x900x32” is value from my Vostro 1710 laptop, you should write there best resolution for your display.

Next save the “/etc/default/grub” file and make this command:

sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Now after restart the system you should see grub menu and tty with new resolution you set up.

Here is my /etc/default/grub file:

 # If you change this file, run 'update-grub' afterwards to update
# /boot/grub/grub.cfg.
# For full documentation of the options in this file, see:
#   info -f grub -n 'Simple configuration'

GRUB_DEFAULT="0"
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT="0"
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET="true"
GRUB_TIMEOUT="10"
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR="`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian`"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""

# Uncomment to enable BadRAM filtering, modify to suit your needs
# This works with Linux (no patch required) and with any kernel that obtains
# the memory map information from GRUB (GNU Mach, kernel of FreeBSD ...)
#GRUB_BADRAM="0x01234567,0xfefefefe,0x89abcdef,0xefefefef"

# Uncomment to disable graphical terminal (grub-pc only)
#GRUB_TERMINAL="console"

# The resolution used on graphical terminal
# note that you can use only modes which your graphic card supports via VBE
# you can see them in real GRUB with the command `vbeinfo'
#GRUB_GFXMODE="1440x900x16,1366x768x16,1280x800x16,1280x720x16,1024x768x16"
GRUB_GFXMODE="1440x900x32"
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX="keep"

# Uncomment if you don't want GRUB to pass "root=UUID=xxx" parameter to Linux
#GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID="true"

# Uncomment to disable generation of recovery mode menu entries
#GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY="true"

# Uncomment to get a beep at grub start
#GRUB_INIT_TUNE="480 440 1"

export GRUB_MENU_PICTURE="/boot/wallpaper.jpg"

In the last line you can see that I added a picture(wallpaper.jpg) from my boot partition to make a new background image on GRUB menu. The picture is on the boot partition because I have a full encrypted partition with my system. Only boot partition in not encrypted.