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
41 .Op Fl t Ar N | Cm off
43 .Op Ar foreground Op Ar background
48 command is used to set various options for the
51 such as video mode, colors, cursor shape, screen output map, font and screen
54 The following command line options are supported:
55 .Bl -tag -width indent
57 Select a new video mode.
58 The modes currently recognized are:
92 .Sx Video Mode Support
94 .It Ar foreground Op Ar background
95 Change colors when displaying text.
96 Specify the foreground color
98 .Dq vidcontrol white ) ,
99 or both a foreground and background colors
101 .Dq vidcontrol yellow blue ) .
104 command below to see available colors.
106 See the supported colors on a given platform.
110 This option may not be always supported by the video driver.
112 Clear the history buffer.
113 .It Fl c Cm normal | blink | destructive
114 Change the cursor appearance.
115 The cursor is either an inverting block
119 or it can be like the old hardware cursor
121 The latter is actually a simulation.
123 Print out current output screen map.
138 The font file can be either uuencoded or in raw binary format.
139 You can also use the menu-driven
141 command to load the font of your choice.
144 may be omitted, in this case
146 will try to guess it from the size of font file.
148 Note that older video cards, such as MDA and CGA, do not support
151 .Sx Video Mode Support
154 below and the man page for
159 of the text mode for the modes with selectable
161 Currently only raster modes, such as
165 .Sx Video Mode Support
170 Set the size of the history (scrollback) buffer to
174 Shows info about the current video adapter.
176 Shows the possible video modes with the current video hardware.
177 .It Fl l Ar screen_map
178 Install screen output map file from
183 Install default screen output map.
185 Sets the base character used to render the mouse pointer to
188 Switch the mouse pointer
192 Used together with the
194 daemon for text mode cut & paste functionality.
196 Capture the current contents of the video buffer corresponding
197 to the terminal device referred to by standard input.
200 utility writes contents of the video buffer to the standard
201 output in a raw binary format.
202 For details about that
204 .Sx Format of Video Buffer Dump
209 but dump contents of the video buffer in a plain text format
210 ignoring nonprintable characters and information about text
212 .It Fl r Ar foreground background
213 Change reverse mode colors to
218 Turn vty switching on or off.
219 When vty switching is off,
220 attempts to switch to a different virtual terminal will fail.
221 (The default is to permit vty switching.)
223 Set the current vty to
225 .It Fl t Ar N | Cm off
226 Set the screensaver timeout to
231 Use hexadecimal digits for output.
233 .Ss Video Mode Support
234 Note that not all modes listed above may be supported by the video
236 You can verify which mode is supported by the video hardware, using the
240 The VESA BIOS support must be linked to the kernel
241 or loaded as a KLD module if you wish to use VESA video modes
246 You need to compile your kernel with the
248 option if you wish to use VGA 90 column modes
252 Video modes other than 25 and 30 line modes may require specific size of font.
255 option above to load a font file to the kernel.
256 If the required size of font has not been loaded to the kernel,
258 will fail if the user attempts to set a new video mode.
260 .Bl -column "25 line modes" "8x16 (VGA), 8x14 (EGA)" -compact
261 .Sy Modes Ta Sy Font size
262 .Li 25 line modes Ta 8x16 (VGA), 8x14 (EGA)
263 .Li 30 line modes Ta 8x16
264 .Li 43 line modes Ta 8x8
265 .Li 50 line modes Ta 8x8
266 .Li 60 line modes Ta 8x8
269 It is better to always load all three sizes (8x8, 8x14 and 8x16)
272 You may set variables in
275 .Pa /etc/rc.conf.local
276 so that desired font files will be automatically loaded
277 when the system starts up.
280 If you want to use the raster text mode
282 you need to recompile your kernel with the
287 for more details on this kernel option.
288 .Ss Format of Video Buffer Dump
295 to capture the current contents of the video buffer.
298 utility writes version and additional information to the standard
299 output, followed by the contents of the terminal device.
301 VGA video memory is typically arranged in two byte tuples,
302 one per character position.
303 In each tuple, the first byte will be the character code,
304 and the second byte is the character's color attribute.
306 The VGA color attribute byte looks like this:
308 .Bl -column "X:X" "<00000000>" "width" "bright foreground color"
309 .Sy "bits# width meaning"
310 .Li "7 <X0000000> 1 character blinking"
311 .Li "6:4 <0XXX0000> 3 background color"
312 .Li "3 <0000X000> 1 bright foreground color"
313 .Li "2:0 <00000XXX> 3 foreground color"
316 Here is a list of the three bit wide base colors:
318 .Bl -hang -offset indent -compact
337 Base colors with bit 3 (the bright foreground flag) set:
339 .Bl -hang -offset indent -compact
358 For example, the two bytes
362 specify an uppercase A (character code 65), blinking
363 (bit 7 set) in yellow (bits 3:0) on a blue background
368 output contains a small header which includes additional
369 information which may be useful to utilities processing
372 The first 10 bytes are always arranged as follows:
373 .Bl -column "Byte range" "Contents" -offset indent
374 .It Sy "Byte Range Contents"
375 .It "1 thru 8 Literal text" Dq Li SCRSHOT_
376 .It "9 File format version number"
377 .It "10 Remaining number of bytes in the header"
380 Subsequent bytes depend on the version number.
381 .Bl -column "Version" "13 and up" -offset indent
382 .It Sy "Version Byte Meaning"
383 .It "1 11 Terminal width, in characters"
384 .It " 12 Terminal depth, in characters"
385 .It " 13 and up The snapshot data"
388 So a dump of an 80x25 screen would start (in hex)
389 .Bd -literal -offset indent
390 53 43 52 53 48 4f 54 5f 01 02 50 19
391 ----------------------- -- -- -- --
393 | | | `--- 80 decimal
394 | | `------ 2 remaining bytes of header data
395 | `--------- File format version 1
396 `------------------------ Literal "SCRSHOT_"
398 .Sh VIDEO OUTPUT CONFIGURATION
399 .Ss Boot Time Configuration
400 You may set the following variables in
403 .Pa /etc/rc.conf.local
404 in order to configure the video output at boot time.
406 .Bl -tag -width foo_bar_var -compact
408 Sets the timeout value for the
411 .It Ar font8x16 , font8x14 , font8x8
412 Specifies font files for the
416 Specifies a screen output map file for the
424 .Ss Driver Configuration
425 The video card driver may let you change default configuration
426 options, such as the default font, so that you do not need to set up
427 the options at boot time.
428 See video card driver manuals, (e.g.\&
432 .Bl -tag -width /usr/share/syscons/scrnmaps/foo-bar -compact
433 .It Pa /usr/share/syscons/fonts/*
435 .It Pa /usr/share/syscons/scrnmaps/*
436 screen output map files.
440 .Pa /usr/share/syscons/fonts/iso-8x16.fnt
445 .Dl vidcontrol -f 8x16 /usr/share/syscons/fonts/iso-8x16.fnt
447 So long as the font file is in
448 .Pa /usr/share/syscons/fonts ,
449 you may abbreviate the file name as
452 .Dl vidcontrol -f 8x16 iso-8x16
454 Furthermore, you can also omit font size
457 .Dl vidcontrol -f iso-8x16
459 Moreover, the suffix specifying the font size can be also omitted; in
462 will use the size of the currently displayed font to construct the
465 .Dl vidcontrol -f iso
467 Likewise, you can also abbreviate the screen output map file name for
470 option if the file is found in
471 .Pa /usr/share/syscons/scrnmaps .
473 .Dl vidcontrol -l iso-8859-1_to_cp437
475 The above command will load
476 .Pa /usr/share/syscons/scrnmaps/iso-8859-1_to_cp437.scm .
478 The following command will set-up a 100x37 raster text mode (useful for
481 .Dl vidcontrol -g 100x37 VESA_800x600
483 The following command will capture the contents of the first virtual
484 terminal, and redirect the output to the
488 .Dl vidcontrol -p < /dev/ttyv0 > shot.scr
490 The following command will dump contents of the fourth virtual terminal
491 to the standard output in the human readable format:
493 .Dl vidcontrol -P < /dev/ttyv3
513 .Em "Ports Collection" .
515 .An S\(/oren Schmidt Aq sos@FreeBSD.org
517 .An Maxim Sobolev Aq sobomax@FreeBSD.org ,
518 .An Nik Clayton Aq nik@FreeBSD.org