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 BEEP This variable controls the style of the system beep on the con‐
127 sole. When unset or when BEEP=default no changes to the system
128 beep will be made. Other possible values of BEEP are: standard
129 - set a standard beep; short - like the standard beep but some‐
130 what shorter; shortest - even more short, suitable when your
131 work generates lots of beeps; polite - a very short beep with
132 low frequency, suitable when there are other people in the room;
133 attention - a very long beep, suitable when you want to warn
134 yourself about an occurring event; annoying - also a long beep,
135 suitable when you want to warn somebody else about an occurring
136 event; and off - disable the system beep on the console.
137
140 There are two kinds of codesets - small (up to 256 symbols) and big (up
141 to 512 symbols). Only small codesets can be used on FreeBSD. When the
142 screen is in text mode (i.e. framebuffer is not used) then fonts cover‐
143 ing big codesets will reduce the number of available foreground colors.
144 Arabic (a big codeset)
147 Supported languages: Arabic, Kurdish in Iran, Pashto, Persian and Urdu.
148 Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (size 8x16) and
150 VGA (sizes 8x16 and 16x32).
151 Armenian
154 Supported language: Armenian.
155 Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (all sizes).
157 CyrAsia
160 This codeset supports some of the non-Slavic Cyrillic languages - Abk‐
161 hazia, Avaric, Azerbaijani, Bashkir, Buryat, Chechen, Chuvash, Inupiaq
162 (Eskimo), Kara-Kalpak, Kazakh, Kirgiz, Komi, Kumyk, Kurdish, Lezghian,
163 Mari (Cheremis), Mongolian, Ossetic, Selkup (Ostyak-Samoyed), Tajik,
164 Tatar, Turkmen, Tuvinian, Uzbek and Yakut.
165 Completely supported by the following font faces: Fixed (all sizes).
167 CyrKoi
170 Supports entirely the 8-bit encodings KOI8-R and KOI8-U. Suitable for
171 Russian and Ukrainian when one of these two encodings is used.
172 Completely covered by the following font faces (in all sizes): Fixed,
174 Terminus, TerminusBold, TerminusBoldVGA and VGA.
175 CyrSlav
178 Supports entirely the 8-bit encodings ISO-8859-5 and CP1251. Suitable
179 the Slavic Cyrillic languages - Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Rus‐
180 sian, Serbian and Ukrainian. For Serbian both the Cyrillic and the
181 Latin alphabets are supported.
182 Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (all sizes), Ter‐
184 minus (all sizes), TerminusBold (all sizes), TerminusBoldVGA (all
185 sizes), VGA (sizes 8x16 and 16x32).
186 Ethiopian (a big codeset)
189 Supports Amharic, Ethiopic (Geez), Tigre and Tigrinya.
190 This codeset is partially covered by the following font faces: Fixed
192 (sizes 8x15 and 8x18), Goha (all sizes) and GohaClassic (all sizes).
193 Georgian
196 Supported language: Georgian.
197 Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (all sizes).
199 Greek
202 Supported language: Greek.
203 Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (all sizes) and
205 VGA (sizes 8x16 and 16x32).
206 Hebrew
209 Supported languages: Hebrew and Yiddish.
210 Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (sizes 8x13,
212 8x15, 8x16 and 8x18) and VGA (sizes 8x16 and 16x32).
213 Lao
216 Supported languages: Lao.
217 Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (sizes 8x15 and
219 8x16).
220 Lat15
223 Covers entirely ISO-8859-1, ISO-8859-9 and ISO-8859-15. Suitable for
224 the so called Latin1 and Latin5 languages - Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian,
225 Aragonese, Asturian, Aymara, Basque, Bislama, Breton, Catalan, Chamor‐
226 ro, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Finnish, French,
227 Frisian, Friulian, Galician, German, Hiri Motu, Icelandic, Ido, Indone‐
228 sian, Interlingua, Interlingue, Italian, Low Saxon, Lule Sami, Luxem‐
229 bourgish, Malagasy, Manx Gaelic, Norwegian Bokmal, Norwegian Nynorsk,
230 Occitan, Oromo or Galla, Portuguese, Rhaeto-Romance (Romansch), Scots
231 Gaelic, Somali, South Sami, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tswana, Turkish,
232 Volapuk, Votic, Walloon, Xhosa, Yapese and Zulu.
233 Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (all sizes), Ter‐
235 minus (all sizes), TerminusBold (all sizes), TerminusBoldVGA (all
236 sizes), VGA (sizes 8x16 and 16x32).
237 Lat2
240 Covers entirely ISO-8859-2. The Euro sign and the Romanian letters
241 with comma below are also supported. Suitable for the so called Latin2
242 languages - Bosnian, Croatian, Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, Slo‐
243 vak, Slovenian and Sorbian (lower and upper).
244 Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (all sizes), Ter‐
246 minus (all sizes), TerminusBold (all sizes), TerminusBoldVGA (all
247 sizes), VGA (sizes 8x16 and 16x32).
248 Lat38
251 Covers entirely ISO-8859-3 and ISO-8859-14. Suitable for Chichewa Es‐
252 peranto, Irish, Maltese and Welsh.
253 Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (all sizes) and
255 VGA (sizes 8x16 and 16x32).
256 Lat7
259 Covers entirely ISO-8859-13. Suitable for Lithuanian, Latvian, Maori
260 and Marshallese.
261 Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (all sizes), Ter‐
263 minus (all sizes), TerminusBold (all sizes), TerminusBoldVGA (all
264 sizes), VGA (sizes 8x16 and 16x32).
265 Thai
268 Supported language: Thai.
269 Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (all sizes).
271 Uni1 (a big codeset)
274 Supports most of the Latin languages, the Slavic Cyrillic languages,
275 Hebrew and barely Arabic.
276 Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (sizes 8x15 and
278 8x16) and VGA (all sizes).
279 Uni2 (a big codeset)
282 Supports most of the Latin languages, the Slavic Cyrillic languages and
283 Greek.
284 Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (all sizes) and
286 VGA (sizes 8x16 and 16x32).
287 Uni3 (a big codeset)
290 Supports most of the Latin and Cyrillic languages.
291 Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (all sizes).
293 Vietnamese (a big codeset)
296 Supported language: Vietnamese.
297 Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (sizes 8x13,
299 8x15, 8x16 and 8x18).
300
303 The standard location of the console-setup configuration file is
304 /etc/default/console-setup. The keyboard configuration is in /etc/de‐
305 fault/keyboard. Fonts that can be used with the variable FONT are usu‐
306 ally installed in /usr/share/consolefonts/ or /lib/kbd/consolefonts/.
307 Translation maps that can be used with the variable CONSOLE_MAP are
308 usually installed in /usr/share/consoletrans/ or /lib/kbd/console‐
309 trans/.
310
313 The aim of the Terminus font is to reduce the eyes-fatigue when one has
314 to read a lot. Currently this font supports only the Latin, the Cyril‐
315 lic and the Greek scripts (the Lat15, Lat2, Lat7, CyrAsia, CyrKoi,
316 CyrSlav, Greek, Uni2 and Uni3 codesets).
317 The fonts with font face TerminusBoldVGA are optimized for use with
319 regular text video modes. They should not be used with framebuffer
320 video modes. The fonts with font face TerminusBold are optimized for
321 use with the framebuffer video modes. The fonts with font face Termi‐
322 nus can be used in all video modes.
323
326 setupcon(1), keyboard(5), setfont(1), consolechars(1), vidcontrol(1)
327console-setup 2011-03-17 CONSOLE-SETUP(5)