Recently with the new machine I assembled with an AMD A10-7850K (which has a fairly powerful integrated GPU), I'm using Ubuntu 15.10 x86_64 and the AMD/ATI fglrx drivers, because I want to have good graphics.

Anyway, this was all nice and dandy, until I needed the bare-bone terminals that are accessible via Ctrl+Alt+F1-6. It was always black or a shade of dark grey. After a lot of Googling and testing, I finally managed to figure it out.

The following posts are the main precursors to fix this problem:

• https://blog.samat.org/2010/11/09/High-resolution-text-console-with-uvesafb-and-Debian/
• http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=168108
• http://askubuntu.com/a/98570 - 2nd comment
• https://idyllictux.wordpress.com/tag/fglrx-2/ - might come in handy later on or to someone else, since it's pretty much this exact topic as well

1. Make sure you have properly removed any other hacks you tried, by running:

  grep vga /proc/cmdline
  grep -ir vga /etc/modprobe.d/

At one point in my trial and error, I had it in the file /etc/default/grub.

2. Install v86d, so that we can use uvesafb:

  sudo apt-get install v86d

3. Edit the file /etc/initramfs-tools/modules and add this line:

  uvesafb mode_option=1920x1080-32 mtrr=3 scroll=ywrap

I'm assuming here you have the same resolution as I have, namely 32-bit colour with 1920x1080 resolution.

4. Change the following lines in the file /etc/default/grub:

  GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
  #GRUB_TERMINAL=console
  #GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480

to this:

  GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=""
  GRUB_TERMINAL=console
  GRUB_GFXMODE=1024x768

Note: The change to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT is optional.

5. Now let's update the boot image and grub:

  sudo update-initramfs -u
  sudo update-grub2

6. Disable plymouth daemon, otherwise it will want to complain to Canonical about "how things cashed":

  sudo mv /etc/init/plymouth.conf /etc/init/plymouth.conf.disabled

7. Reboot and if all goes well, Ctrl+Alt+F1-6 will work as intended. It might take a few seconds for the monitor to re-adapt to the new rendering display.

8. If the following command:

  dmesg | grep "mode switch failed"

gives you one or more lines like this:

  uvesafb: mode switch failed (eax=0x34f, err=0). Trying again with default timings.

meh... disregard and assume it's only a warning. I tried a lot of stuff and nothing removed this crazy issue.