How to change the video resolution in Raspbian PC/Mac Pixel

In case you are not aware, you can also get Raspbian Pixel for your PC or Mac. It's a 32-bit Debian Stretch distro with Raspbian enhancements, notably the Pixel desktop.

One problem is that the default video mode after install is 640x480, rather limiting. I searched a bit for how to change the video resolution but most articles were about Raspbian on the RPi. However this GRUB documentation was the key.

To find the modes available to you, interrupt GRUB's booting with c, then at the grub> prompt, type videoinfo. You will get a list of available modes. This depends on your (real or virtual) video card. In my case I was running under VirtualBox and had sufficient video memory configured. Note a video mode you want, then as root (either via sudo or getting a root shell) do the following:

Edit /etc/default/grub. Change the entry GRUB_GFXMODE which is commented out by default to for example:

GRUB_GFXMODE=1280x1024x32

Check that the file also contains

GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=keep

Run update-grub, which will rewrite the grub.cfg file. Reboot and enjoy your new video resolution.

Addendum: I've found that when the VirtualBox guest additions are installed, a different resolution is used. This can be configured with the program lxrandr. I have to investigate under what circumstances the display switches from the resolution inherited from grub to its own setting.

Are all your blogger blogs using https?

Blogger now allows you to force all http access to redirect to https access. But if you have a lot of blogs how do you check which (historical) ones need to have this setting enabled in Settings > Basic? Wget to the rescue again. Assuming you have a list of http URLs in the file sites.

for s in $(cat sites)
do
  echo -n "$s " 1>&2
  wget --spider "$s" 2>&1
done | grep Location:

If the output is something like:

http://myblog.blogspot.com Location: https://myblog.blogspot.com/ [following]

that blog is fine.

The 1>&2 for the echo is so that its output isn't filtered out by the grep.