Screen resolution in console after mkinitcpio changes

Support System Updates
1

Either [Stable Update] 2025-12-08 or [Stable Update] 2025-12-15 came with a .pacnew for mkinitcpio.conf which introduced changes to my hooks configuration.

After DIFFPROG=meld pacdiff -s and also manually removing base and keymap, my HOOKS changed to:

HOOKS=(systemd autodetect microcode modconf kms keyboard sd-vconsole block filesystems fsck)

I did sudo mkinitcpio -P after that and rebooted. That is when I noticed that my screen resolution in the console has changed during bootup. The console font is way bigger now and the screen resolution seems slightly distorted compared to before when using the hookskeymapand consolefont.

Itā€™s no big deal because the system boots up to GNOME very fast but I wondered if and where I would be able to do something about it. Is there some configuration file, wiki page, ā€¦ which goes into futher details or have I missed something about the sd-vconsole hook?

My /etc/vconsole.conf looks like this:

KEYMAP=de
FONT=
FONT_MAP=
2

You donā€™t need keyboard with sd-vconsole as it contains keyboard

3

This is wrong. Keymap and keyboard are 2 different things

@mkb maybe here?

Have not tried to change the size, i only configured the German layout

[teo@teo-lenovo-v15 ~]$ cat /etc/vconsole.conf
# Written by systemd-localed(8) or systemd-firstboot(1), read by systemd-localed
# and systemd-vconsole-setup(8). Use localectl(1) to update this file.
KEYMAP=de-latin1-nodeadkeys
FONT=
FONT_MAP=
XKBLAYOUT=de,us
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4

Well /etc/vconsole.conf will be read by sd-vconsole

5

Yes you do. Itā€™s keymap which you donā€™t need anymore.

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6

Iā€™ve investigated further. Turns out the ā€˜wrongā€™ screen resolution is really only being used for a couple of seconds. I carefully checked the screen during bootup and noticed that just right before the system switches to the graphical login manager, the correct resolution seems to be set. Switching to a virtual console after bootup also uses the correct resolution.

So itā€™s only those first couple seconds. I donā€™t know why it changed and if itā€™s either because of the last big update to GNOME 49 or the changes due to the .pacnew of mkinitcpio.conf with its changed HOOKS variable.

I wonder if this resolution issue might go away, when Iā€™d put autostart first in line of the HOOKS variable. I remember reading something about this in the forum somewhere and it might have even been in one of @Teo 's comments.

7

Neither. The lower resolution during the first couple of seconds comes from grub. But you can tailor that by modifying the ā€œGRUB_GFXMODE=ā€ line in /etc/default/grub. Seeā€¦ :backhand_index_pointing_down:

info grub-install

ā€¦ for details. Some experimentation might be required, because grub may or may not support certain resolutions and graphics modes for your particular graphics adapter.

Note: If you do not have the info command available, install the texinfo package. Those are the GNU info pages, which are a more elaborate alternative to man pages. Alternatively, you can also useā€¦ :backhand_index_pointing_down:

man grub-install
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8

@mkb
Please see Linux console - ArchWiki for more info on how the console is loaded and initialised.

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