.\" .\" vidcontrol - a utility for manipulating the syscons video driver .\" .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions .\" are met: .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. .\" .\" @(#)vidcontrol.1 .\" $FreeBSD$ .\" .Dd December 23, 2006 .Dt VIDCONTROL 1 .Os .Sh NAME .Nm vidcontrol .Nd system console control and configuration utility .Sh SYNOPSIS .Nm .Op Fl CdLHPpx .Op Fl b Ar color .Op Fl c Ar appearance .Oo .Fl f .Op Ar size .Ar file .Oc .Op Fl g Ar geometry .Op Fl h Ar size .Op Fl i Cm adapter | mode .Op Fl l Ar screen_map .Op Fl M Ar char .Op Fl m Cm on | off .Op Fl r Ar foreground Ar background .Op Fl S Cm on | off .Op Fl s Ar number .Op Fl T Cm xterm | cons25 .Op Fl t Ar N | Cm off .Op Ar mode .Op Ar foreground Op Ar background .Op Cm show .Sh DESCRIPTION The .Nm utility is used to set various options for the .Xr syscons 4 console driver, such as video mode, colors, cursor shape, screen output map, font and screen saver timeout. .Pp The following command line options are supported: .Bl -tag -width indent .It Ar mode Select a new video mode. The modes currently recognized are: .Ar 80x25 , .Ar 80x30 , .Ar 80x43 , .Ar 80x50 , .Ar 80x60 , .Ar 132x25 , .Ar 132x30 , .Ar 132x43 , .Ar 132x50 , .Ar 132x60 , .Ar VGA_40x25 , .Ar VGA_80x25 , .Ar VGA_80x30 , .Ar VGA_80x50 , .Ar VGA_80x60 , .Ar VGA_90x25 , .Ar VGA_90x30 , .Ar VGA_90x43 , .Ar VGA_90x50 , .Ar VGA_90x60 , .Ar EGA_80x25 , .Ar EGA_80x43 , .Ar VESA_132x25 , .Ar VESA_132x43 , .Ar VESA_132x50 , .Ar VESA_132x60 . .\"The graphic mode .\".Ar VGA_320x200 .\"and The raster text mode .Ar VESA_800x600 can also be chosen. Alternatively, a mode can be specified with its number by using a mode name of the form .Li MODE_ Ns Aq Ar NUMBER . A list of valid mode numbers can be obtained with the .Fl i Cm mode option. See .Sx Video Mode Support below. .It Ar foreground Op Ar background Change colors when displaying text. Specify the foreground color (e.g.\& .Dq vidcontrol white ) , or both a foreground and background colors (e.g.\& .Dq vidcontrol yellow blue ) . Use the .Cm show command below to see available colors. .It Cm show See the supported colors on a given platform. .It Fl b Ar color Set border color to .Ar color . This option may not be always supported by the video driver. .It Fl C Clear the history buffer. .It Fl c Cm normal | blink | destructive Change the cursor appearance. The cursor is either an inverting block .Pq Cm normal that can optionally .Cm blink , or it can be like the old hardware cursor .Pq Cm destructive . The latter is actually a simulation. .It Fl d Print out current output screen map. .It Xo .Fl f .Op Ar size .Ar file .Xc Load font .Ar file for .Ar size (currently, only .Cm 8x8 , .Cm 8x14 or .Cm 8x16 ) . The font file can be either uuencoded or in raw binary format. You can also use the menu-driven .Xr vidfont 1 command to load the font of your choice. .Pp .Ar Size may be omitted, in this case .Nm will try to guess it from the size of font file. .Pp Note that older video cards, such as MDA and CGA, do not support software font. See also .Sx Video Mode Support and .Sx EXAMPLES below and the man page for .Xr syscons 4 . .It Fl g Ar geometry Set the .Ar geometry of the text mode for the modes with selectable geometry. Currently only raster modes, such as .Ar VESA_800x600 , support this option. See also .Sx Video Mode Support and .Sx EXAMPLES below. .It Fl h Ar size Set the size of the history (scrollback) buffer to .Ar size lines. .It Fl i Cm adapter Shows info about the current video adapter. .It Fl i Cm mode Shows the possible video modes with the current video hardware. .It Fl l Ar screen_map Install screen output map file from .Ar screen_map . See also .Xr syscons 4 . .It Fl L Install default screen output map. .It Fl M Ar char Sets the base character used to render the mouse pointer to .Ar char . .It Fl m Cm on | off Switch the mouse pointer .Cm on or .Cm off . Used together with the .Xr moused 8 daemon for text mode cut & paste functionality. .It Fl p Capture the current contents of the video buffer corresponding to the terminal device referred to by standard input. The .Nm utility writes contents of the video buffer to the standard output in a raw binary format. For details about that format see .Sx Format of Video Buffer Dump below. .It Fl P Same as .Fl p , but dump contents of the video buffer in a plain text format ignoring nonprintable characters and information about text attributes. .It Fl H When used with .Fl p or .Fl P , it instructs .Nm to dump full history buffer instead of visible portion of the video buffer only. .It Fl r Ar foreground background Change reverse mode colors to .Ar foreground and .Ar background . .It Fl S Cm on | off Turn vty switching on or off. When vty switching is off, attempts to switch to a different virtual terminal will fail. (The default is to permit vty switching.) This protection can be easily bypassed when the kernel is compiled with the .Dv DDB option. However, you probably should not compile the kernel debugger on a box which is supposed to be physically secure. .It Fl s Ar number Set the current vty to .Ar number . .It Fl T Cm xterm | cons25 Switch between xterm and cons25 style terminal emulation. .It Fl t Ar N | Cm off Set the screensaver timeout to .Ar N seconds, or turns it .Cm off . .It Fl x Use hexadecimal digits for output. .El .Ss Video Mode Support Note that not all modes listed above may be supported by the video hardware. You can verify which mode is supported by the video hardware, using the .Fl i Cm mode option. .Pp The VESA BIOS support must be linked to the kernel or loaded as a KLD module if you wish to use VESA video modes or 132 column modes (see .Xr vga 4 ) . .Pp You need to compile your kernel with the .Ar VGA_WIDTH90 option if you wish to use VGA 90 column modes (see .Xr vga 4 ) . .Pp Video modes other than 25 and 30 line modes may require specific size of font. Use .Fl f option above to load a font file to the kernel. If the required size of font has not been loaded to the kernel, .Nm will fail if the user attempts to set a new video mode. .Pp .Bl -column "25 line modes" "8x16 (VGA), 8x14 (EGA)" -compact .Sy Modes Ta Sy Font size .No 25 line modes Ta 8x16 (VGA), 8x14 (EGA) .No 30 line modes Ta 8x16 .No 43 line modes Ta 8x8 .No 50 line modes Ta 8x8 .No 60 line modes Ta 8x8 .El .Pp It is better to always load all three sizes (8x8, 8x14 and 8x16) of the same font. .Pp You may set variables in .Pa /etc/rc.conf or .Pa /etc/rc.conf.local so that desired font files will be automatically loaded when the system starts up. See below. .Pp If you want to use any of the raster text modes you need to recompile your kernel with the .Dv SC_PIXEL_MODE option. See .Xr syscons 4 for more details on this kernel option. .Ss Format of Video Buffer Dump The .Nm utility uses the .Xr syscons 4 .Dv CONS_SCRSHOT .Xr ioctl 2 to capture the current contents of the video buffer. The .Nm utility writes version and additional information to the standard output, followed by the contents of the video buffer. .Pp VGA video memory is typically arranged in two byte tuples, one per character position. In each tuple, the first byte will be the character code, and the second byte is the character's color attribute. .Pp The VGA color attribute byte looks like this: .Bl -column "X:X" "<00000000>" "width" "bright foreground color" .Sy "bits# width meaning" .Li "7 1 character blinking" .Li "6:4 <0XXX0000> 3 background color" .Li "3 <0000X000> 1 bright foreground color" .Li "2:0 <00000XXX> 3 foreground color" .El .Pp Here is a list of the three bit wide base colors: .Pp .Bl -hang -offset indent -compact .It 0 Black .It 1 Blue .It 2 Green .It 3 Cyan .It 4 Red .It 5 Magenta .It 6 Brown .It 7 Light Grey .El .Pp Base colors with bit 3 (the bright foreground flag) set: .Pp .Bl -hang -offset indent -compact .It 0 Dark Grey .It 1 Light Blue .It 2 Light Green .It 3 Light Cyan .It 4 Light Red .It 5 Light Magenta .It 6 Yellow .It 7 White .El .Pp For example, the two bytes .Pp .Dl "65 158" .Pp specify an uppercase A (character code 65), blinking (bit 7 set) in yellow (bits 3:0) on a blue background (bits 6:4). .Pp The .Nm output contains a small header which includes additional information which may be useful to utilities processing the output. .Pp The first 10 bytes are always arranged as follows: .Bl -column "Byte range" "Contents" -offset indent .It Sy "Byte Range Contents" .It "1 thru 8 Literal text" Dq Li SCRSHOT_ .It "9 File format version number" .It "10 Remaining number of bytes in the header" .El .Pp Subsequent bytes depend on the version number. .Bl -column "Version" "13 and up" -offset indent .It Sy "Version Byte Meaning" .It "1 11 Terminal width, in characters" .It " 12 Terminal depth, in characters" .It " 13 and up The snapshot data" .El .Pp So a dump of an 80x25 screen would start (in hex) .Bd -literal -offset indent 53 43 52 53 48 4f 54 5f 01 02 50 19 ----------------------- -- -- -- -- | | | | ` 25 decimal | | | `--- 80 decimal | | `------ 2 remaining bytes of header data | `--------- File format version 1 `------------------------ Literal "SCRSHOT_" .Ed .Sh VIDEO OUTPUT CONFIGURATION .Ss Boot Time Configuration You may set the following variables in .Pa /etc/rc.conf or .Pa /etc/rc.conf.local in order to configure the video output at boot time. .Pp .Bl -tag -width foo_bar_var -compact .It Ar blanktime Sets the timeout value for the .Fl t option. .It Ar font8x16 , font8x14 , font8x8 Specifies font files for the .Fl f option. .It Ar scrnmap Specifies a screen output map file for the .Fl l option. .El .Pp See .Xr rc.conf 5 for more details. .Ss Driver Configuration The video card driver may let you change default configuration options, such as the default font, so that you do not need to set up the options at boot time. See video card driver manuals, (e.g.\& .Xr vga 4 ) for details. .Sh FILES .Bl -tag -width /usr/share/syscons/scrnmaps/foo-bar -compact .It Pa /usr/share/syscons/fonts/* font files. .It Pa /usr/share/syscons/scrnmaps/* screen output map files. .El .Sh EXAMPLES If you want to load .Pa /usr/share/syscons/fonts/iso-8x16.fnt to the kernel, run .Nm as: .Pp .Dl vidcontrol -f 8x16 /usr/share/syscons/fonts/iso-8x16.fnt .Pp So long as the font file is in .Pa /usr/share/syscons/fonts , you may abbreviate the file name as .Pa iso-8x16 : .Pp .Dl vidcontrol -f 8x16 iso-8x16 .Pp Furthermore, you can also omit font size .Dq Li 8x16 : .Pp .Dl vidcontrol -f iso-8x16 .Pp Moreover, the suffix specifying the font size can be also omitted; in this case, .Nm will use the size of the currently displayed font to construct the suffix: .Pp .Dl vidcontrol -f iso .Pp Likewise, you can also abbreviate the screen output map file name for the .Fl l option if the file is found in .Pa /usr/share/syscons/scrnmaps . .Pp .Dl vidcontrol -l iso-8859-1_to_cp437 .Pp The above command will load .Pa /usr/share/syscons/scrnmaps/iso-8859-1_to_cp437.scm . .Pp The following command will set-up a 100x37 raster text mode (useful for some LCD models): .Pp .Dl vidcontrol -g 100x37 VESA_800x600 .Pp The following command will capture the contents of the first virtual terminal video buffer, and redirect the output to the .Pa shot.scr file: .Pp .Dl vidcontrol -p < /dev/ttyv0 > shot.scr .Pp The following command will dump contents of the fourth virtual terminal video buffer to the standard output in the human readable format: .Pp .Dl vidcontrol -P < /dev/ttyv3 .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr kbdcontrol 1 , .Xr vidfont 1 , .Xr keyboard 4 , .Xr screen 4 , .Xr syscons 4 , .Xr vga 4 , .Xr rc.conf 5 , .Xr kldload 8 , .Xr moused 8 , .Xr watch 8 .Pp The various .Pa scr2* utilities in the .Pa graphics and .Pa textproc categories of the .Em "Ports Collection" . .Sh AUTHORS .An S\(/oren Schmidt Aq sos@FreeBSD.org .An Sascha Wildner .Sh CONTRIBUTORS .An Maxim Sobolev Aq sobomax@FreeBSD.org , .An Nik Clayton Aq nik@FreeBSD.org