Basic text mode for corner cases

[Nio Wiklund]

I have been using Clonezilla for several years, and it has worked for me in many computers. But today, when I wanted to help my son backup his refurbished Dell 7080 connected to an ASUS 3840x2160 monitor via a DisplayPort to HDMI cable it failed. It worked correctly when running the installed operating system (Windows 11),, and the grub menu worked, but none of the graphics options in the menu worked, when getting into Clonezilla.

I solved the problem by adding the following grub command into grub.cfg,

efitextmode 0

which forces text mode with 80 columns and 25 rows in UEFI mode,

1. as the first command in a menuentry, which leaves the grub menu and the other menuentries untouched

2. as a command before the menuentries, which modifies also the grub menu, makes it easy to read in a monitor with very high resolution. I think it will affect all the following entries, which is OK in the particular case with my son's Dell 7080, but not OK for a general tool.

I suggest that a menuentry is added to Clonezilla to provide this feature for cases where the fancy modes will fail.

[Steven Shiau]

Thanks for your suggestion. We will check if this will have any side effects.

[Steven Shiau]

Please give testing Clonezilla live >= 3.2.3-10 or 20250712-* a try:
https://clonezilla.org/
Your feedback has been included.
Please let us know the results if you test it.
Thanks.

[Nio Wiklund]

I tried Clonezilla live 3.2.3-10 and it works in my son's computer. But we noticed, that all text-size related options [that we tested] produced the same text size, it seems like alternative 2 in my opening post. I am not sure that you want that result.

Edit 1: Selecting 'Large font' makes the font too big, so that several of the dialogue boxes will not be within the screen. All the other size choices will make the text the same size. (However, while selecting language, the text size will be the same as for the other choices, even for 'Large font'. After selecting language the 'Large font' will apply.)

Edit 2 : I continued testing in another computer (not my son's computer, but an own Dell Precision M4800). Selecting 640x480 as well as 1024x768 produced the same text size as the default, 37 lines and 100 columns. Selecting KMS produced a higher resolution, 67 lines and 240 columns. This works in my Dell Precision M4800, but I think the previous version of Clonezilla failed to produce a corresponding high text resolution in my son's Dell 7080 when connected to a 3840x2160-monitor.

[Steven Shiau]

Could you please take some photos about that then share?
Thanks.

[Nio Wiklund]

Clonezilla live 3.2.3-10 in my son's computer

1-clonezilla-grub-menu_in_Dell-7080-with-3840x2160-monitor.jpg
1-for-default-and-other-font-selections_in_Dell-7080-with-3840x2160-monitor.jpg
1-for-specifically-1024x768-resolution_in_Dell-7080-with-3840x2160-monitor.jpg
1-large-font-after-setting-language_in_Dell-7080-with-3840x2160-monitor.jpg

Clonezilla live 3.2.3-10 in my Dell Precision M4800 with a 1920x1080 screen

2-for-default-and-other-font-selections_in_Dell-M4800.jpg
2-large-font-after-setting-language_in_Dell-M4800.jpg

The following link should work for you to see the picture files (photos of what is shown when running Clonezilla),

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1fMNTTpyFGLe2M8nuog3Ec_eNHBgNCbN6?usp=sharing

[Steven Shiau]

Thanks for your help.
Actually "efitextmode 0" will only affect the grub menu. However, the text font size you mentioned is actually in GNU/Linux system. Hence that's another story.
So far we do not have a good mechanism to detect the best solution of the monitor then use the proper font size in GNU/Linux console mode automatically. Therefore you have to try and get the best one.
If you know a mechanism to do that automatically, please share that, We will try to implement that in the future.
Thanks.

[Steven Shiau]

Oh, I got an idea to implement that. Will test and if it's OK, the mechanism to set the proper font size will be added in the near future.

[Steven Shiau]

We did an improvement about the text font size. Now it can be automatically detected before starting Clonezilla menu.
As for the menu for keyboard and language, since it has to show multi languages, we use jfbterm. Its mechanism is different from the pure console mode, so we have to find another way to deal with the font size in the future.
Anyhow, the font size in the console should be easier to handle:
Please give testing Clonezilla live 3.2.3-11 or 20250713-* a try:
https://clonezilla.org/downloads.php