correct font is not restore after switch back from X

Unless somebody demonstrates that setupcon is using truly wacky ioctls that should never work, I claim that this is a kernel bug; console-setup doesn't handle VT switches.

Video state tends to be restored by the X driver. It's likely that it's grabbing state on original startup and not rechecking it on individual VT switches.

Yeah, I was just coming to the same conclusion. console-setup's FAQ (not yet in Ubuntu) says:

1.1) The font is broken after I switch to X and back to the console

   Actually the boot-time font replaces the font of console-setup. In
   most cases this means the non-ASCII symbols are replaced by some
   other funny symbols.

   This happens because sometimes X video driver is unable to restore
   properly the state of the console when you switch from X to
   text-mode. How severe the problem is depends on the combination
   Video-card/X-driver you use.

   Notice that all this can happen only if the console is in
   text-mode, i.e. you are not using framebuffer. If you add to
   /etc/modules the kernel module for framebuffer you will be able to
   switch from X to console whenever you want and the font will never
   be broken.

   Sometimes the problem doesn't exists at all. It is rumored that
   some old video adapters (more than 10 years old) fall in this
   category but I have never seen such videocard.

   The most common case seams to be that the state at the time the X
   server is started is remembered. Try to setup the console before X
   Window is started and if the problem disappears then you are in
   this category. The problem will reappear if you change the console
   setup while X Window is already started. All video adapters I have
   had are in this category.

   And sometimes the console setup is never remembered. You will have
   to use the "setupcon" utility to restore the console setup and hope
   that the problem will be fixed in some future version of X Window.
   Another option is to use framebuffer. You may want to send a bug
   report to the X developers.

I have just installed Gutsy, and I can confirm that the problem exists. It is profoundly annoying!

I also can confirm this behaviour. Problem seems to be with nvidia drivers.

Is there any solution for this? I see there is no activity here. This bug combined with bug #129910 is pretty annoying. Please give us some feedback what we can do. Should we report somewhere else? I've tried couple of things from Colins comment but nothing works. Only solution that is partly working is adding /bin/setupcon to my ~/.zlogin file. I would like to help fixing this problem! Please let me know is there anyway I can help to debug or something. Thank you.

This is fixed in hardy.

Thanks for letting us know that this is fixed in Hardy; closing.

Someone please re-open this bug - it has NOT been fixed. This issue is also present in Jaunty, with new symptoms that don't seem to be described here.

I've Googled for a few hours already, and have searched the bug reports here on Launchpad. I have not come across anything else appropriate to post to, so here I am.

All of these symptoms seem to be additive - any or all can occur at the same time:

1. With the default console font, size, and splash screen settings as supplied with a Jaunty install, the console frequently comes up in something like 40x25 text mode when called upon with Ctrl-Alt-F1 after having started X. The result strongly resembles the look of an 8-bitter running in 40x25 mode, when accessing an 80x25-oriented online service.

2. Sometimes the system will forget how to position the cursor, leaving it flashing in the upper-left corner of the screen. Text being displayed and/or typed seems to be positioned properly otherwise, subject to the other symptoms herein.

3. Sometimes, the system forgets how to scroll the screen. No matter how much text is printed, it is as if one had paged up to the top of an ever-expanding scrollback buffer. Hitting Control-L and then briefly switching to any other virtual console helps some.

4. Rarely, the console font will be replaced with garbage (thin vertical stripes, in my case). One can see where text has been printed, blindly execute commands, switch consoles, even start X and use it normally, but the console font is otherwise completely garbled.

5. In one instance, for whatever reason, the console got into a state that looked like it had confused the horizontal and vertical sync. The result was a repeated pattern of text fragments covering the entire screen, scrolling diagonally (how my LCDs managed to show this, I have no idea). The last time this happened, I had switched from the splash screen over to an 80x60 text console (kernel mode 0xF06, set via my Grub config prior to rebooting). The computer was otherwise operational.

I gave up after Googling and arguing with my machine for a number of hours. On doing so, I disabled the boot splash screen, disabled all framebuffer-related features, set my Grub config for 80x50 text (kernel mode 0xF01), set the console font to 8 pixels (by editing /etc/default/console-setup), and rebooted. Everything looks fine until X starts, after which the virtual console switches to double-spaced 80x50 text when called forth, as if it were an 80x100 virtual terminal with a viewport fixed on the upper 50 lines. Running `sudo /etc/init.d/console-setup start` brings it back to a sane state.

I can probably put my system back into any of the above states and submit screenshots, if necessary.