2 .\" vidcontrol - a utility for manipulating the syscons video driver
4 .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
5 .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
7 .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
8 .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
9 .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
10 .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
11 .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
21 .Nd system console control and configuration utility
26 .Op Fl c Ar appearance
34 .Op Fl i Cm adapter | mode
35 .Op Fl l Ar screen_map
38 .Op Fl r Ar foreground Ar background
40 .Op Fl t Ar N | Cm off
42 .Op Ar foreground Op Ar background
47 command is used to set various options for the
50 such as video mode, colors, cursor shape, screen output map, font and screen
53 The following command line options are supported:
54 .Bl -tag -width indent
56 Select a new video mode.
57 The modes currently recognized are:
91 .Sx Video Mode Support
93 .It Ar foreground Op Ar background
94 Change colors when displaying text.
95 Specify the foreground color
97 .Dq vidcontrol white ) ,
98 or both a foreground and background colors
100 .Dq vidcontrol yellow blue ) .
103 command below to see available colors.
105 See the supported colors on a given platform.
109 This option may not be always supported by the video driver.
111 Clear the history buffer.
112 .It Fl c Cm normal | blink | destructive
113 Change the cursor appearance.
114 The cursor is either an inverting block
118 or it can be like the old hardware cursor
120 The latter is actually a simulation.
122 Print out current output screen map.
137 The font file can be either uuencoded or in raw binary format.
138 You can also use the menu-driven
140 command to load the font of your choice.
143 may be omitted, in this case
145 will try to guess it from the size of font file.
147 Note that older video cards, such as MDA and CGA, do not support
150 .Sx Video Mode Support
153 below and the man page for
158 of the text mode for the modes with selectable
160 Currently only raster modes, such as
164 .Sx Video Mode Support
169 Set the size of the history (scrollback) buffer to
173 Shows info about the current video adapter.
175 Shows the possible video modes with the current video hardware.
176 .It Fl l Ar screen_map
177 Install screen output map file from
182 Install default screen output map.
184 Sets the base character used to render the mouse pointer to
187 Switch the mouse pointer
191 Used together with the
193 daemon for text mode cut & paste functionality.
195 Capture the current contents of the video buffer corresponding
196 to the terminal device referred to by standard input.
198 writes contents of the video buffer to the standard
199 output in a raw binary format.
200 For details about that
202 .Sx Format of Video Buffer Dump
207 but dump contents of the video buffer in a plain text format
208 ignoring nonprintable characters and information about text
210 .It Fl r Ar foreground background
211 Change reverse mode colors to
216 Set the current vty to
218 .It Fl t Ar N | Cm off
219 Set the screensaver timeout to
224 Use hexadecimal digits for output.
226 .Ss Video Mode Support
227 Note that not all modes listed above may be supported by the video
229 You can verify which mode is supported by the video hardware, using the
233 The VESA BIOS support must be linked to the kernel
234 or loaded as a KLD module if you wish to use VESA video modes
239 You need to compile your kernel with the
241 option if you wish to use VGA 90 column modes
245 Video modes other than 25 and 30 line modes may require specific size of font.
248 option above to load a font file to the kernel.
249 If the required size of font has not been loaded to the kernel,
251 will fail if the user attempts to set a new video mode.
253 .Bl -column "25 line modes" "8x16 (VGA), 8x14 (EGA)" -compact
254 .Sy Modes Ta Sy Font size
255 .Li 25 line modes Ta 8x16 (VGA), 8x14 (EGA)
256 .Li 30 line modes Ta 8x16
257 .Li 43 line modes Ta 8x8
258 .Li 50 line modes Ta 8x8
259 .Li 60 line modes Ta 8x8
262 It is better to always load all three sizes (8x8, 8x14 and 8x16)
265 You may set variables in
268 .Pa /etc/rc.conf.local
269 so that desired font files will be automatically loaded
270 when the system starts up.
273 If you want to use the raster text mode
275 you need to recompile your kernel with the
280 for more details on this kernel option.
281 .Ss Format of Video Buffer Dump
288 to capture the current contents of the video buffer.
290 writes version and additional information to the standard
291 output, followed by the contents of the terminal device.
293 VGA video memory is typically arranged in two byte tuples,
294 one per character position.
295 In each tuple, the first byte will be the character code,
296 and the second byte is the character's color attribute.
298 The VGA color attribute byte looks like this:
300 .Bl -column "X:X" "<00000000>" "width" "bright foreground color"
301 .Sy "bits# width meaning"
302 .Li "7 <X0000000> 1 character blinking"
303 .Li "6:4 <0XXX0000> 3 background color"
304 .Li "3 <0000X000> 1 bright foreground color"
305 .Li "2:0 <00000XXX> 3 foreground color"
308 Here is a list of the three bit wide base colors:
310 .Bl -hang -offset indent -compact
329 Base colors with bit 3 (the bright foreground flag) set:
331 .Bl -hang -offset indent -compact
350 For example, the two bytes
354 specify an uppercase A (character code 65), blinking
355 (bit 7 set) in yellow (bits 3:0) on a blue background
360 output contains a small header which includes additional
361 information which may be useful to utilities processing
364 The first 10 bytes are always arranged as follows:
365 .Bl -column "Byte range" "Contents" -offset indent
366 .It Sy "Byte Range Contents"
367 .It "1 thru 8 Literal text" Dq Li SCRSHOT_
368 .It "9 File format version number"
369 .It "10 Remaining number of bytes in the header"
372 Subsequent bytes depend on the version number.
373 .Bl -column "Version" "13 and up" -offset indent
374 .It Sy "Version Byte Meaning"
375 .It "1 11 Terminal width, in characters"
376 .It " 12 Terminal depth, in characters"
377 .It " 13 and up The snapshot data"
380 So a dump of an 80x25 screen would start (in hex)
381 .Bd -literal -offset indent
382 53 43 52 53 48 4f 54 5f 01 02 50 19
383 ----------------------- -- -- -- --
385 | | | `--- 80 decimal
386 | | `------ 2 remaining bytes of header data
387 | `--------- File format version 1
388 `------------------------ Literal "SCRSHOT_"
390 .Sh VIDEO OUTPUT CONFIGURATION
391 .Ss Boot Time Configuration
392 You may set the following variables in
395 .Pa /etc/rc.conf.local
396 in order to configure the video output at boot time.
398 .Bl -tag -width foo_bar_var -compact
400 Sets the timeout value for the
403 .It Ar font8x16 , font8x14 , font8x8
404 Specifies font files for the
408 Specifies a screen output map file for the
416 .Ss Driver Configuration
417 The video card driver may let you change default configuration
418 options, such as the default font, so that you do not need to set up
419 the options at boot time.
420 See video card driver manuals, (e.g.\&
424 .Bl -tag -width /usr/share/syscons/scrnmaps/foo-bar -compact
425 .It Pa /usr/share/syscons/fonts/*
427 .It Pa /usr/share/syscons/scrnmaps/*
428 screen output map files.
432 .Pa /usr/share/syscons/fonts/iso-8x16.fnt
437 .Dl vidcontrol -f 8x16 /usr/share/syscons/fonts/iso-8x16.fnt
439 So long as the font file is in
440 .Pa /usr/share/syscons/fonts ,
441 you may abbreviate the file name as
444 .Dl vidcontrol -f 8x16 iso-8x16
446 Furthermore, you can also omit font size
449 .Dl vidcontrol -f iso-8x16
451 Likewise, you can also abbreviate the screen output map file name for
454 option if the file is found in
455 .Pa /usr/share/syscons/scrnmaps .
457 .Dl vidcontrol -l iso-8859-1_to_cp437
459 The above command will load
460 .Pa /usr/share/syscons/scrnmaps/iso-8859-1_to_cp437.scm .
462 The following command will set-up a 100x37 raster text mode (useful for
465 .Dl vidcontrol -g 100x37 VESA_800x600
467 The following command will capture the contents of the first virtual
468 terminal, and redirect the output to the
472 .Dl vidcontrol -p < /dev/ttyv0 > shot.scr
474 The following command will dump contents of the forth virtual terminal
475 to the standard output in the human readable format:
477 .Dl vidcontrol -P < /dev/ttyv3
497 .Em "Ports Collection" .
499 .An S\(/oren Schmidt Aq sos@FreeBSD.org
501 .An Maxim Sobolev Aq sobomax@FreeBSD.org ,
502 .An Nik Clayton Aq nik@FreeBSD.org