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.
199 utility writes contents of the video buffer to the standard
200 output in a raw binary format.
201 For details about that
203 .Sx Format of Video Buffer Dump
208 but dump contents of the video buffer in a plain text format
209 ignoring nonprintable characters and information about text
211 .It Fl r Ar foreground background
212 Change reverse mode colors to
217 Set the current vty to
219 .It Fl t Ar N | Cm off
220 Set the screensaver timeout to
225 Use hexadecimal digits for output.
227 .Ss Video Mode Support
228 Note that not all modes listed above may be supported by the video
230 You can verify which mode is supported by the video hardware, using the
234 The VESA BIOS support must be linked to the kernel
235 or loaded as a KLD module if you wish to use VESA video modes
240 You need to compile your kernel with the
242 option if you wish to use VGA 90 column modes
246 Video modes other than 25 and 30 line modes may require specific size of font.
249 option above to load a font file to the kernel.
250 If the required size of font has not been loaded to the kernel,
252 will fail if the user attempts to set a new video mode.
254 .Bl -column "25 line modes" "8x16 (VGA), 8x14 (EGA)" -compact
255 .Sy Modes Ta Sy Font size
256 .Li 25 line modes Ta 8x16 (VGA), 8x14 (EGA)
257 .Li 30 line modes Ta 8x16
258 .Li 43 line modes Ta 8x8
259 .Li 50 line modes Ta 8x8
260 .Li 60 line modes Ta 8x8
263 It is better to always load all three sizes (8x8, 8x14 and 8x16)
266 You may set variables in
269 .Pa /etc/rc.conf.local
270 so that desired font files will be automatically loaded
271 when the system starts up.
274 If you want to use the raster text mode
276 you need to recompile your kernel with the
281 for more details on this kernel option.
282 .Ss Format of Video Buffer Dump
289 to capture the current contents of the video buffer.
292 utility writes version and additional information to the standard
293 output, followed by the contents of the terminal device.
295 VGA video memory is typically arranged in two byte tuples,
296 one per character position.
297 In each tuple, the first byte will be the character code,
298 and the second byte is the character's color attribute.
300 The VGA color attribute byte looks like this:
302 .Bl -column "X:X" "<00000000>" "width" "bright foreground color"
303 .Sy "bits# width meaning"
304 .Li "7 <X0000000> 1 character blinking"
305 .Li "6:4 <0XXX0000> 3 background color"
306 .Li "3 <0000X000> 1 bright foreground color"
307 .Li "2:0 <00000XXX> 3 foreground color"
310 Here is a list of the three bit wide base colors:
312 .Bl -hang -offset indent -compact
331 Base colors with bit 3 (the bright foreground flag) set:
333 .Bl -hang -offset indent -compact
352 For example, the two bytes
356 specify an uppercase A (character code 65), blinking
357 (bit 7 set) in yellow (bits 3:0) on a blue background
362 output contains a small header which includes additional
363 information which may be useful to utilities processing
366 The first 10 bytes are always arranged as follows:
367 .Bl -column "Byte range" "Contents" -offset indent
368 .It Sy "Byte Range Contents"
369 .It "1 thru 8 Literal text" Dq Li SCRSHOT_
370 .It "9 File format version number"
371 .It "10 Remaining number of bytes in the header"
374 Subsequent bytes depend on the version number.
375 .Bl -column "Version" "13 and up" -offset indent
376 .It Sy "Version Byte Meaning"
377 .It "1 11 Terminal width, in characters"
378 .It " 12 Terminal depth, in characters"
379 .It " 13 and up The snapshot data"
382 So a dump of an 80x25 screen would start (in hex)
383 .Bd -literal -offset indent
384 53 43 52 53 48 4f 54 5f 01 02 50 19
385 ----------------------- -- -- -- --
387 | | | `--- 80 decimal
388 | | `------ 2 remaining bytes of header data
389 | `--------- File format version 1
390 `------------------------ Literal "SCRSHOT_"
392 .Sh VIDEO OUTPUT CONFIGURATION
393 .Ss Boot Time Configuration
394 You may set the following variables in
397 .Pa /etc/rc.conf.local
398 in order to configure the video output at boot time.
400 .Bl -tag -width foo_bar_var -compact
402 Sets the timeout value for the
405 .It Ar font8x16 , font8x14 , font8x8
406 Specifies font files for the
410 Specifies a screen output map file for the
418 .Ss Driver Configuration
419 The video card driver may let you change default configuration
420 options, such as the default font, so that you do not need to set up
421 the options at boot time.
422 See video card driver manuals, (e.g.\&
426 .Bl -tag -width /usr/share/syscons/scrnmaps/foo-bar -compact
427 .It Pa /usr/share/syscons/fonts/*
429 .It Pa /usr/share/syscons/scrnmaps/*
430 screen output map files.
434 .Pa /usr/share/syscons/fonts/iso-8x16.fnt
439 .Dl vidcontrol -f 8x16 /usr/share/syscons/fonts/iso-8x16.fnt
441 So long as the font file is in
442 .Pa /usr/share/syscons/fonts ,
443 you may abbreviate the file name as
446 .Dl vidcontrol -f 8x16 iso-8x16
448 Furthermore, you can also omit font size
451 .Dl vidcontrol -f iso-8x16
453 Moreover, the suffix specifying the font size can be also omitted; in
456 will use the size of the currently displayed font to construct the
459 .Dl vidcontrol -f iso
461 Likewise, you can also abbreviate the screen output map file name for
464 option if the file is found in
465 .Pa /usr/share/syscons/scrnmaps .
467 .Dl vidcontrol -l iso-8859-1_to_cp437
469 The above command will load
470 .Pa /usr/share/syscons/scrnmaps/iso-8859-1_to_cp437.scm .
472 The following command will set-up a 100x37 raster text mode (useful for
475 .Dl vidcontrol -g 100x37 VESA_800x600
477 The following command will capture the contents of the first virtual
478 terminal, and redirect the output to the
482 .Dl vidcontrol -p < /dev/ttyv0 > shot.scr
484 The following command will dump contents of the fourth virtual terminal
485 to the standard output in the human readable format:
487 .Dl vidcontrol -P < /dev/ttyv3
507 .Em "Ports Collection" .
509 .An S\(/oren Schmidt Aq sos@FreeBSD.org
511 .An Maxim Sobolev Aq sobomax@FreeBSD.org ,
512 .An Nik Clayton Aq nik@FreeBSD.org