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I'm using Lubuntu 11.10, and I use my console a lot. Today I discovered that its font was changed; specifically, this screen is from yesterday:

yesterday

and this is from today:

today

First of all, any idea of how I changed it? I'm pretty sure I did nothing to justify this, but I'm also certain that if something happened there's always a reason, so...

Besides, how do I restore the previous font? The main issue is that I'm not sure what it was.

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My guess is that you hit a key combination that told the terminal to increase the font size. – Kyle Jones Aug 31 '12 at 17:53
As far as I can see there is no way to change the font size with a key combination; actually, as far as I can see the only way to change the font is by modifying something on grub, so, well, I'm kinda confident I didn't do anything like that. – Odexios Aug 31 '12 at 18:41
What files in /etc have been modified since the last reboot? Did you reboot since yesterday? What did you do before to set the console font: are you using a font on the graphic card, or the framebuffer? – Gilles Aug 31 '12 at 23:32
I have no idea if I'm using a font from the graphic card or the framebuffer; I'm googling right now to understand the difference, thoug. As far as I can see (i.e., as far as my find skills can see), no relevant files in /etc/ have been modified; I rebooted (is that right?) many times since when I wrote the post (one just after I saw that the font was different), and nothing changed. By the way, thank for the corrections in the post! Though I don't see why the "thanks" was to be removed. – Odexios Sep 2 '12 at 0:45

3 Answers

up vote 3 down vote

I'm wondering why you chose a bunch of dots and arrows to demonstrate a font instead of... you know... letters.

Anyway the command for changing font on the VTs is setfont or consolechars. Running setfont with no args or consolechars -d loads a "default" font. Others that you can load are found in /usr/share/consolefonts.

In Debian there's a file /etc/default/console-setup which the boot scripts use to decide what to do with the console font.

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There's a reason I chose that particular screen, and I'd guess it wouldn't be hard to understand why I did it for anyone who would be actually interested in the matter; people don't usually make screenshot of a tty screen just to pass time. The only screen of my tty pre-change I have is one I took because it's from a program I wrote and I wanted to pass that screen to a friend. I'm sure you can see why the second screen is similar to the first one. Anyway, thanks for the answer, I'll look into the matter when I'm a little less drunk; it seems the right direction, though. Have a nice day. – Odexios Sep 2 '12 at 0:40
Of course, matching an old screenshot made for a different purpose makes sense – Alan Curry Sep 2 '12 at 0:45
Well, it was the only screenshot I had, not a lot of options to choose from. Anyway, let's be clear; there was no reason for you to be provocative, considering I'm pretty sure I didn't did anything to deserve it; and when you can choose between provocative and conciliatory, choosing the first one is almost always wrong. That said, setfont with no arguments echoes this message: Cannot find default fonts. I'd say that's not normal; what I found on google didn't help me, I'll search some more, though. Again, not trying to pick a fight, I'm grateful for the help; it's the style I don't like. – Odexios Sep 2 '12 at 0:55
up vote 0 down vote

You can use the reset command in bash to reset everything in your shell, such as color and so on.

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I tried with a reset, but nothing changed. I tried with a reboot, too, but nothing changed. – Odexios Sep 2 '12 at 0:45
Oh ,So you didn't changed font already , and you want to change now ... ok? or default font deleted. – Mohsen Pahlevanzadeh Sep 2 '12 at 11:50
up vote 0 down vote accepted

I don't know if kbd is installed by default or not, but though setfont worked, I didn't have it installed; a simple sudo apt-get install kbd did the trick, and the font is back to normal.

setfont still echoes Cannot find default font, though; I'm still trying to understand what's happened/what is happening.

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