PartialVolume/shredos.x86_64

Add control supports for parameters governing brightness and resolution

Ricky-Tigg opened this issue · 5 comments

Ricky-Tigg commented

v.: 2023.08.2_25.0_x86-64_0.35 | Hello. I discover that the combination Ventoy-formatted media and an img-formatted disk image is operational on UEFI BIOS. Meanwhile there are two parameters this application has no power on: intensity of brightness and screen resolution. Since those parameters are at their defaults, they are with the highest supported values. The consequence of the former is disastrous, causing an unnecessary high stress to eyes that is barely bearable; that should be avoided. The latter causes the text to be barely visible on nowadays laptops; a common resolution is at least 1920 x 1080 for 15.6-inch-screen having a 16:9 ratio, while a resolution that would not cause stress would have to be at most 1368 x 768.

note: disk image solely provided in x86-64.img format, not in x86-64.iso format, unlike the product presentation implies it.

PartialVolume commented

The Keyboard buttons for brightness do work on some systems however it really depends on the hardware. For instance on a laptop I have that has a Intel GPU the keyboard brightness buttons don't work. Even so, it's possible to adjust the brightness by sending a value to to the sysfs, the use of the command `echo 5 > /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/ will reduce the brightness. A couple of reasons why the buttons don't work could be because of a missing chipset driver or maybe just a bios/acpi incompatibility in the kernel code.

A option to adjust resolution or automatically set resolution for the DRM (direct rendering manager) is something I would need to look into. If somebody wants to submit a PR to modify the nwipe_launcher script to adjust DRM resoltion that would be welcome.

In the meantime you can always use setfont -d -C /dev/tty1 to double the size of the font as one option. The rendering isn't great but better than looking at tiny text.

PartialVolume commented

P.S. What hardware are you using?

Ricky-Tigg commented

My hardware:

$ sudo lshw -sanitize -class system -class processor
computer
 description: Notebook
 product: X507UA
 vendor: ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC.
 version: 1.0
 width: 64 bits
 capabilities: smbios-3.0.0 dmi-3.0.0 smp vsyscall32
 configuration: boot=normal chassis=notebook family=VivoBook uuid=(...)
  *-cpu
  description: CPU
  product: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-7200U CPU @ 2.50GHz
  vendor: Intel Corp.

In Gnome DE, the intensity of the actual brightness is set with the bar dedicated for this purpose to its lowest; thatis equivalent to the value 75.

$ cat /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/{brightness,max_brightness,actual_brightness} | column
75	7500	75

The execution of commands while ShredOS is running implies to access a CLI virtual console, and so does imply the commands here given as instructions. My experience reveals what follows:

  • ctrl alt f1 | nwipe tool exhibited; default view.
  • ctrl alt f2 | sh-5.2# prompt exhibited.
  • ctrl alt f3 | shredos login: exhibited; I am not aware of a source that would inform that user name.

Regardless the supported console being active, ShredOS appears to not detect the correct keyboard layout, which is currently as reported by my Linux distribution:

$ localectl status
System Locale: LANG=fi_FI.UTF-8
 VC Keymap: fi
 X11 Layout: fi

As a result in these console environments, there are keys that do not match the characters that are printed on them; and so does happen with all these commands you mentioned as instruction, then making of them invariably erroneous. This, as you can conceive it, puts me in a situation in which I can't test the effect of those commands.

At last, unlike the option ctrl + C Quit that is exhibited in the nwipe tool view, this key combination does not lead to quit the application, but instead it reports once compiled Paused, press a key to restart nwipe..

PartialVolume commented

As a result in these console environments, there are keys that do not match the characters that are printed on them; and so does happen with all these commands you mentioned as instruction, then making of them invariably erroneous. This, as you can conceive it, puts me in a situation in which I can't test the effect of those commands.

See https://github.com/PartialVolume/shredos.x86_64#how-to-set-the-keyboard-map-using-the-loadkeys-command-see-here-for-persistent-change-between-reboots

I'm not even sure it's possible to detect the keyboard layout automatically, usually that's set by the user setting language on install. If anybody knows different please let me know. With ShredOS you set the keyboard layout by country using the command loadkeys us, loadkeys UK etc. you can append this to grub.cfg so it will automatically boot up with the correct keyboard layout.

Despite loading the correct keyboard layout that doesn't mean the brightness keys will work. I've tried that and it doesn't.

At last, unlike the option ctrl + C Quit that is exhibited in the nwipe tool view, this key combination does not lead to quit the application, but instead it reports once compiled Paused, press a key to restart nwipe..

I'm not exactly sure what you are saying here.. Are you expecting something different to be the case? What you have described is the way it works. Control C does indeed exit nwipe, but not to a terminal prompt. In /dev/tty1, i.e the default nwipe window nwipe is called from a never ending loop within a script, so you can't control-c to a terminal prompt by design.

Ricky-Tigg commented
  • I have no excuse, the instructions covering the keyboard map layout do exist in the presentation of the product.
  • A convention is that the task matches the description of the function and therefore act accordingly; here it is ctrl + C Quit, thus quitting is expected, which implies to dismount the partition on which ShredOS resides, which should trigger the presentation of the system boot prompt.

I will be ready to test the suggested setfont -d -C /dev/tty1 as soon as the support for the locale fi_FI.UTF-8 is brought to ShredOS.

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