GRUB 2 vs. framebuffer

[Niki Kovacs]

Hi,

I'm currently testing Ubuntu Server 10.04 LTS on a sandbox machine, an 
old NEC Powermate with an NVidia GeForce 4000 video card.

After the first reboot, the display is reduced to the upper left third 
of the screen or so. The last time I've been using this machine, there 
was a test install of Arch Linux on it, which had the same problem. Arch 
defaults to the "old" GRUB (v. 0.97 IIRC), and I remember having solved 
the problem by adding 'nomodeset vga=788' as parameters to the 'kernel' 
line. Now I wonder how I can possibly achieve something similar with 
GRUB 2.

I read through the docs and so far, managed to have a partial success. I 
added the following parameter: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="nomodeset" and ran 
update-grub. Now I already have a "full screen" display, but only in the 
classical 80x25 console style.

I wonder now how I could possible have the equivalent of 'vga=788' 
output that uses the full screen, not only the upper left corner.

Any suggestions for that?

Niki