1CONSOLE-SETUP(5) Console-setup User's Manual CONSOLE-SETUP(5)
2
6 console-setup - configuration file for setupcon
7
9 The file console-setup specifies the encoding and the font to be used
10 by setupcon(1) in order to setup the console. It can be used also to
11 specify the keyboard layout but it is not recommended to do so, use
12 keyboard(5) instead.
13 The font specification consists of three parameters - codeset, font
15 face and font size. The codeset specifies what characters will be sup‐
16 ported by the font. There isn't one-to-one correspondence between
17 codeset and encoding, for example the codeset Lat15 is suitable for
18 ISO 8859-1, ISO 8859-9 and ISO 8859-15. The codesets are two kinds -
19 small and big. Only small codesets are supported on FreeBSD.
20 The font face determines the general look of the font. Each font face
22 is available in certain possible sizes. On FreeBSD only 8x16, 8x14 and
23 8x8 are valid sizes. On Linux if framebuffer is not used or con‐
24 solechars(1) is installed instead of setfont(1), then the permitted
25 sizes have the form 8xNUMBER.
26 The console driver of FreeBSD permits fonts in different sizes to be
29 simultaneously loaded. Which one of them will be actually used depends
30 on the current video mode. Therefore, on this platform the font size
31 specification will be ignored and setupcon(1) will load the selected
32 font face in all available sizes.
33 The file console-setup consists of variable settings in POSIX format:
35 VARIABLE='VALUE'
37 Only one assignment is allowed per line. Comments (starting with '#')
39 are also allowed.
40
43 The following variables can be set.
44 ACTIVE_CONSOLES
47 Specifies the device files in /dev of the virtual terminals to
48 be configured. File name wild-cards (*, ?) are allowed. On
49 Linux usually you can set this to /dev/tty[1-6] and on FreeBSD a
50 sensible value is /dev/ttyv[0-8]. You can assign to this vari‐
51 able also the special value guess. It will cause setupcon(1) to
52 attempt to guess the active virtual consoles by looking in con‐
53 figuration files such as /etc/inittab and /etc/ttys. This
54 guessing is not always reliable.
55 CHARMAP
58 Specifies the desired encoding on the console. Valid values
59 are: UTF-8, ARMSCII-8, CP1251, CP1255, CP1256, GEORGIAN-ACADEMY,
60 GEORGIAN-PS, IBM1133, ISIRI-3342, ISO-8859-1, ISO-8859-2,
61 ISO-8859-3, ISO-8859-4, ISO-8859-5, ISO-8859-6, ISO-8859-7,
62 ISO-8859-8, ISO-8859-9, ISO-8859-10, ISO-8859-11, ISO-8859-13,
63 ISO-8859-14, ISO-8859-15, ISO-8859-16, KOI8-R, KOI8-U, TIS-620
64 and VISCII. The special value guess is also recognized in which
65 case the system command locale(1) will be used to guess the de‐
66 sired encoding (currently this works reliably only with GNU
67 libc).
68 CODESET
71 In most cases the special value guess can be used here in which
72 case a suitable codeset will be guessed. The codeset determines
73 which symbols are supported by the font. Valid small codesets
74 are: Armenian, CyrAsia, CyrKoi, CyrSlav, Georgian, Greek,
75 Hebrew, Lao, Lat15, Lat2, Lat38, Lat7 and Thai. Valid big code‐
76 sets are: Arabic, Ethiopian, Uni1, Uni2, Uni3 and Vietnamese.
77 Only small codesets can be used on FreeBSD. See below the sec‐
78 tion entitled “CODESETS” for detailed description of each of
79 these codesets.
80 FONTFACE and FONTSIZE
83 Valid font faces are: VGA (sizes 8x8, 8x14, 8x16, 16x28 and
84 16x32), Terminus (sizes 6x12, 8x14, 8x16, 10x20, 12x24, 14x28
85 and 16x32), TerminusBold (sizes 8x14, 8x16, 10x20, 12x24, 14x28
86 and 16x32), TerminusBoldVGA (sizes 8x14 and 8x16), and Fixed
87 (sizes 8x13, 8x14, 8x15, 8x16 and 8x18). If however
88 CODESET=Ethiopian, then the available font faces are Goha and
89 GohaClassic, each in sizes 8x12, 8x14 and 8x16.
90 Set FONTFACE and FONTSIZE to empty strings if you want to con‐
92 figure only the keyboard and to leave the console font un‐
93 changed.
94 VIDEOMODE
97 Set VIDEOMODE to an empty string to avoid setting up the video
98 mode. On FreeBSD you can run
99 vidcontrol -i mode
101 in order to see all possible video modes. On Linux fbset(1) is
103 used to configure the video mode but very often this doesn't
104 work because the default framebuffer driver (VesaFB) is rather
105 limited and doesn't allow changes of the video mode.
106 FONT, FONT_MAP and CONSOLE_MAP
109 If set, specify that a non standard font is to be used. The
110 value of the variable FONT consists of one or more space sepa‐
111 rated font file names. On Linux, when the font doesn't contain
112 embedded Unicode map, an external map can be specified with the
113 variable FONT_MAP. The value of CONSOLE_MAP is a file that
114 specifies a translation map from the user's 8-bit encoding to
115 Unicode (Linux only) or directly to font positions.
116 SCREEN_WIDTH and SCREEN_HEIGHT
119 If set, these variables specify a screen size that setupcon(1)
120 will enforce with stty(1). This can be useful with some braille
121 devices that are only 40 cells wide. The screen size can not
122 exceed what the current screen resolution can display according
123 to the size of the loaded font.
124
127 There are two kinds of codesets - small (up to 256 symbols) and big (up
128 to 512 symbols). Only small codesets can be used on FreeBSD. When the
129 screen is in text mode (i.e. framebuffer is not used) then fonts cover‐
130 ing big codesets will reduce the number of available foreground colors.
131 Arabic (a big codeset)
134 Supported languages: Arabic, Kurdish in Iran, Pashto, Persian and Urdu.
135 Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (size 8x16) and
137 VGA (sizes 8x16 and 16x32).
138 Armenian
141 Supported language: Armenian.
142 Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (all sizes).
144 CyrAsia
147 This codeset supports some of the non-Slavic Cyrillic languages - Abk‐
148 hazia, Avaric, Azerbaijani, Bashkir, Buryat, Chechen, Chuvash, Inupiaq
149 (Eskimo), Kara-Kalpak, Kazakh, Kirgiz, Komi, Kumyk, Kurdish, Lezghian,
150 Mari (Cheremis), Mongolian, Ossetic, Selkup (Ostyak-Samoyed), Tajik,
151 Tatar, Turkmen, Tuvinian, Uzbek and Yakut.
152 Completely supported by the following font faces: Fixed (all sizes).
154 CyrKoi
157 Supports entirely the 8-bit encodings KOI8-R and KOI8-U. Suitable for
158 Russian and Ukrainian when one of these two encodings is used.
159 Completely covered by the following font faces (in all sizes): Fixed,
161 Terminus, TerminusBold, TerminusBoldVGA and VGA.
162 CyrSlav
165 Supports entirely the 8-bit encodings ISO-8859-5 and CP1251. Suitable
166 the Slavic Cyrillic languages - Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Rus‐
167 sian, Serbian and Ukrainian. For Serbian both the Cyrillic and the
168 Latin alphabets are supported.
169 Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (all sizes), Ter‐
171 minus (all sizes), TerminusBold (all sizes), TerminusBoldVGA (all
172 sizes), VGA (sizes 8x16 and 16x32).
173 Ethiopian (a big codeset)
176 Supports Amharic, Ethiopic (Geez), Tigre and Tigrinya.
177 This codeset is partially covered by the following font faces: Fixed
179 (sizes 8x15 and 8x18), Goha (all sizes) and GohaClassic (all sizes).
180 Georgian
183 Supported language: Georgian.
184 Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (all sizes).
186 Greek
189 Supported language: Greek.
190 Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (all sizes) and
192 VGA (sizes 8x16 and 16x32).
193 Hebrew
196 Supported languages: Hebrew and Yiddish.
197 Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (sizes 8x13,
199 8x15, 8x16 and 8x18) and VGA (sizes 8x16 and 16x32).
200 Lao
203 Supported languages: Lao.
204 Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (sizes 8x15 and
206 8x16).
207 Lat15
210 Covers entirely ISO-8859-1, ISO-8859-9 and ISO-8859-15. Suitable for
211 the so called Latin1 and Latin5 languages - Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian,
212 Aragonese, Asturian, Aymara, Basque, Bislama, Breton, Catalan, Chamor‐
213 ro, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Finnish, French,
214 Frisian, Friulian, Galician, German, Hiri Motu, Icelandic, Ido, Indone‐
215 sian, Interlingua, Interlingue, Italian, Low Saxon, Lule Sami, Luxem‐
216 bourgish, Malagasy, Manx Gaelic, Norwegian Bokmal, Norwegian Nynorsk,
217 Occitan, Oromo or Galla, Portuguese, Rhaeto-Romance (Romansch), Scots
218 Gaelic, Somali, South Sami, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tswana, Turkish,
219 Volapuk, Votic, Walloon, Xhosa, Yapese and Zulu.
220 Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (all sizes), Ter‐
222 minus (all sizes), TerminusBold (all sizes), TerminusBoldVGA (all
223 sizes), VGA (sizes 8x16 and 16x32).
224 Lat2
227 Covers entirely ISO-8859-2. The Euro sign and the Romanian letters
228 with comma below are also supported. Suitable for the so called Latin2
229 languages - Bosnian, Croatian, Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, Slo‐
230 vak, Slovenian and Sorbian (lower and upper).
231 Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (all sizes), Ter‐
233 minus (all sizes), TerminusBold (all sizes), TerminusBoldVGA (all
234 sizes), VGA (sizes 8x16 and 16x32).
235 Lat38
238 Covers entirely ISO-8859-3 and ISO-8859-14. Suitable for Chichewa Es‐
239 peranto, Irish, Maltese and Welsh.
240 Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (all sizes) and
242 VGA (sizes 8x16 and 16x32).
243 Lat7
246 Covers entirely ISO-8859-13. Suitable for Lithuanian, Latvian, Maori
247 and Marshallese.
248 Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (all sizes), Ter‐
250 minus (all sizes), TerminusBold (all sizes), TerminusBoldVGA (all
251 sizes), VGA (sizes 8x16 and 16x32).
252 Thai
255 Supported language: Thai.
256 Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (all sizes).
258 Uni1 (a big codeset)
261 Supports most of the Latin languages, the Slavic Cyrillic languages,
262 Hebrew and barely Arabic.
263 Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (sizes 8x15 and
265 8x16) and VGA (all sizes).
266 Uni2 (a big codeset)
269 Supports most of the Latin languages, the Slavic Cyrillic languages and
270 Greek.
271 Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (all sizes) and
273 VGA (sizes 8x16 and 16x32).
274 Uni3 (a big codeset)
277 Supports most of the Latin and Cyrillic languages.
278 Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (all sizes).
280 Vietnamese (a big codeset)
283 Supported language: Vietnamese.
284 Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (sizes 8x13,
286 8x15, 8x16 and 8x18).
287
290 The standard location of the console-setup configuration file is
291 /etc/default/console-setup. The keyboard configuration is in /etc/de‐
292 fault/keyboard. Fonts that can be used with the variable FONT are usu‐
293 ally installed in /usr/share/consolefonts/ or /lib/kbd/consolefonts/.
294 Translation maps that can be used with the variable CONSOLE_MAP are
295 usually installed in /usr/share/consoletrans/ or /lib/kbd/console‐
296 trans/.
297
300 The aim of the Terminus font is to reduce the eyes-fatigue when one has
301 to read a lot. Currently this font supports only the Latin, the Cyril‐
302 lic and the Greek scripts (the Lat15, Lat2, Lat7, CyrAsia, CyrKoi,
303 CyrSlav, Greek, Uni2 and Uni3 codesets).
304 The fonts with font face TerminusBoldVGA are optimized for use with
306 regular text video modes. They should not be used with framebuffer
307 video modes. The fonts with font face TerminusBold are optimized for
308 use with the framebuffer video modes. The fonts with font face Termi‐
309 nus can be used in all video modes.
310
313 setupcon(1), keyboard(5), setfont(1), consolechars(1), vidcontrol(1)
314console-setup 2011-03-17 CONSOLE-SETUP(5)