the screen starts very small and only enlarges after I log in.

Welcom to grub2/Plymouth!

http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/Plymouth -- ``The idea is that early on in the boot process the native mode for the

computer is set, plymouth uses that mode, and that mode stays throughout

the entire boot process up to and after X starts. Ideally, the goal is

to get rid of all flicker during startup.''

Just forget about everything except for the new Mantra "no more flickering above all else (especially compatibility)".

The initrd contains a udev which loads the fbcon.ko from the real root file system. This is what they consider "early on in the boot process the native mode for the

computer is set" to be.

But what if fbcon does 640x480 or some small resolution? You can hack around this somehow. I've never tried but there are plenty of reports, go search for them.

But what if I don't want fbcon at all due to a weird display that it fails on? You can rebuild your initrd with fbcon aliased to a non-existent module name like "off" or "zowie".

$ cat /etc/modprobe.d/inhibit-fbcon.conf

alias fbcon off

then run:

update-initramfs -u

update-grub

Other than that I have not found a way.