# How to resize the boot menu on a UEFI/GPT/ZFS machine?



## justinnoor (Dec 3, 2018)

Is there a way to resize the boot options menu in FreeBSD 11.2 on a UEFI/GPT/ZFS machine (zfs-on-root)?

On multiple machines, the installation resulted in the boot options menu being rendered in a tiny font positioned at the top left of the screen (see ‘photo a’ at bottom).

Changing the font size in /etc/rc and /boot/loader.conf does not fix it. Changing the font size in /etc/rc.conf only affects userland.

Any thoughts?

Photo a


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## xtaz (Dec 3, 2018)

Break into the loader prompt and try typing `gop list` which should show different modes. Then you can try setting one of those modes with `gop set <n>`. Assuming this solves the problem you can make this permanent with efi_max_resolution="800x600" in /boot/loader.conf I *think*.


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## justinnoor (Dec 3, 2018)

Thanks. Seems to be a double whammy. In addition to the efi issue, ZFS is complaining about something. At the boot loader prompt:

```
gop set 3
Ok quit
Failed to start image provided by ZFS(1)
```

Adding `efi_max_resolution` to loader.conf did not change anything. I’ll have to dig deeper into this. This is a zfs-on-root install. Any thoughts? Thanks again.


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## k.jacker (Dec 3, 2018)

The resolution has nothing to do with zfs.


justinnoor said:


> Adding *efi_max_resolution *to *loader.conf *did not change anything.


What you want is a lower resolution, not a higher 

Booting in UEFI mode, will allways set the highest possible resolution when the system boots.
If you want the good old 80x25 resolution with the beasty menu filling the whole screen, then the most natural approach would be to
remove FreeBSD's EFI partition from the drive(s) and substitute it with a legacy boot partition and a MBR (or protective MBR as it's really called on GPT).
Your BIOS/UEFI has to be set to legacy/CSM booting as well.


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## justinnoor (Dec 3, 2018)

Unless there’s a good reason, using MBR with ZFS is not recommended. Using MBR in general is not recommended unless there’s no other options. If this is the only solution, it’s definitely not worth bothering over, especially for a server.


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## k.jacker (Dec 3, 2018)

You seem to misunderstand the partitioning scheme MBR and the (fake, protective) MBR to boot in legacy mode on a GPT partitionin scheme.

But, you are right. I wouldn't bother configuring the looks of the console on a server, neither.


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## justinnoor (Dec 3, 2018)

I understand your point. If a machine supports both MBR/GPT and UEFI/GPT, it would be nonsensical to use MBR unless there was a very good reason (i.e. OS requirements). Conversly, if a machine only supports MBR/GPT, then it would make sense (because it’s the only option). Regardless, using MBR/GPT is not an option in our case. Thanks.


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## SirDice (Dec 5, 2018)

Try switching vt(4) to text mode instead of graphics mode.

In loader.conf:

```
hw.vga.textmode=1
```

Not sure if that works as expected on UEFI framebuffer though. It definitely helps with older IPMI versions (graphics scaling always appears too large; kind of like the old 'overscan' issues).


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## justinnoor (Dec 13, 2018)

UPDATE

Looks like this was cleaned up a bit in 12.0. Thank you, core.


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