CONSOLE-SETUP(5) Console-setup User's Manual CONSOLE-SETUP(5)
NAME
console-setup - configuration file for setupcon
DESCRIPTION
The file console-setup specifies the encoding and the font to be used
by setupcon(1) in order to setup the console. It can be used also to
specify the keyboard layout but it is not recommended to do so, use
keyboard(5) instead.
The font specification consists of three parameters - codeset, font
face and font size. The codeset specifies what characters will be sup-
ported by the font. There isn't one-to-one correspondence between
codeset and encoding, for example the codeset Lat15 is suitable for
ISO 8859-1, ISO 8859-9 and ISO 8859-15. The codesets are two kinds -
small and big. Only small codesets are supported on FreeBSD.
The font face determines the general look of the font. Each font face
is available in certain possible sizes. On FreeBSD only 8x16, 8x14 and
8x8 are valid sizes. On Linux if framebuffer is not used or con-
solechars(1) is installed instead of setfont(1), then the permitted
sizes have the form 8xNUMBER.
The console driver of FreeBSD permits fonts in different sizes to be
simultaneously loaded. Which one of them will be actually used depends
on the current video mode. Therefore, on this platform the font size
specification will be ignored and setupcon(1) will load the selected
font face in all available sizes.
The file console-setup consists of variable settings in POSIX format:
VARIABLE='VALUE'
Only one assignment is allowed per line. Comments (starting with '#')
are also allowed.
OPTIONS
The following variables can be set.
ACTIVE_CONSOLES
Specifies the device files in /dev of the virtual terminals to
be configured. File name wild-cards (*, ?) are allowed. On
Linux usually you can set this to /dev/tty[1-6] and on FreeBSD a
sensible value is /dev/ttyv[0-8]. You can assign to this vari-
able also the special value guess. It will cause setupcon(1) to
attempt to guess the active virtual consoles by looking in con-
figuration files such as /etc/inittab and /etc/ttys. This
guessing is not always reliable.
CHARMAP
Specifies the desired encoding on the console. Valid values
are: UTF-8, ARMSCII-8, CP1251, CP1255, CP1256, GEORGIAN-ACADEMY,
GEORGIAN-PS, IBM1133, ISIRI-3342, ISO-8859-1, ISO-8859-2,
ISO-8859-3, ISO-8859-4, ISO-8859-5, ISO-8859-6, ISO-8859-7,
ISO-8859-8, ISO-8859-9, ISO-8859-10, ISO-8859-11, ISO-8859-13,
ISO-8859-14, ISO-8859-15, ISO-8859-16, KOI8-R, KOI8-U, TIS-620
and VISCII. The special value guess is also recognized in which
case the system command locale(1) will be used to guess the de-
sired encoding (currently this works reliably only with GNU
libc).
CODESET
In most cases the special value guess can be used here in which
case a suitable codeset will be guessed. The codeset determines
which symbols are supported by the font. Valid small codesets
are: Armenian, CyrAsia, CyrKoi, CyrSlav, Georgian, Greek,
Hebrew, Lao, Lat15, Lat2, Lat38, Lat7 and Thai. Valid big code-
sets are: Arabic, Ethiopian, Uni1, Uni2, Uni3 and Vietnamese.
Only small codesets can be used on FreeBSD. See below the sec-
tion entitled “CODESETS” for detailed description of each of
these codesets.
FONTFACE and FONTSIZE
Valid font faces are: VGA (sizes 8x8, 8x14, 8x16, 16x28 and
16x32), Terminus (sizes 6x12, 8x14, 8x16, 10x20, 12x24, 14x28
and 16x32), TerminusBold (sizes 8x14, 8x16, 10x20, 12x24, 14x28
and 16x32), TerminusBoldVGA (sizes 8x14 and 8x16), and Fixed
(sizes 8x13, 8x14, 8x15, 8x16 and 8x18). If however
CODESET=Ethiopian, then the available font faces are Goha and
GohaClassic, each in sizes 8x12, 8x14 and 8x16.
Set FONTFACE and FONTSIZE to empty strings if you want to con-
figure only the keyboard and to leave the console font un-
changed.
VIDEOMODE
Set VIDEOMODE to an empty string to avoid setting up the video
mode. On FreeBSD you can run
vidcontrol -i mode
in order to see all possible video modes. On Linux fbset(1) is
used to configure the video mode but very often this doesn't
work because the default framebuffer driver (VesaFB) is rather
limited and doesn't allow changes of the video mode.
FONT, FONT_MAP and CONSOLE_MAP
If set, specify that a non standard font is to be used. The
value of the variable FONT consists of one or more space sepa-
rated font file names. On Linux, when the font doesn't contain
embedded Unicode map, an external map can be specified with the
variable FONT_MAP. The value of CONSOLE_MAP is a file that
specifies a translation map from the user's 8-bit encoding to
Unicode (Linux only) or directly to font positions.
SCREEN_WIDTH and SCREEN_HEIGHT
If set, these variables specify a screen size that setupcon(1)
will enforce with stty(1). This can be useful with some braille
devices that are only 40 cells wide. The screen size can not
exceed what the current screen resolution can display according
to the size of the loaded font.
BEEP This variable controls the style of the system beep on the con-
sole. When unset or when BEEP=default no changes to the system
beep will be made. Other possible values of BEEP are: standard
- set a standard beep; short - like the standard beep but some-
what shorter; shortest - even more short, suitable when your
work generates lots of beeps; polite - a very short beep with
low frequency, suitable when there are other people in the room;
attention - a very long beep, suitable when you want to warn
yourself about an occurring event; annoying - also a long beep,
suitable when you want to warn somebody else about an occurring
event; and off - disable the system beep on the console.
CODESETS
There are two kinds of codesets - small (up to 256 symbols) and big (up
to 512 symbols). Only small codesets can be used on FreeBSD. When the
screen is in text mode (i.e. framebuffer is not used) then fonts cover-
ing big codesets will reduce the number of available foreground colors.
Arabic (a big codeset)
Supported languages: Arabic, Kurdish in Iran, Pashto, Persian and Urdu.
Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (size 8x16) and
VGA (sizes 8x16 and 16x32).
Armenian
Supported language: Armenian.
Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (all sizes).
CyrAsia
This codeset supports some of the non-Slavic Cyrillic languages - Abk-
hazia, Avaric, Azerbaijani, Bashkir, Buryat, Chechen, Chuvash, Inupiaq
(Eskimo), Kara-Kalpak, Kazakh, Kirgiz, Komi, Kumyk, Kurdish, Lezghian,
Mari (Cheremis), Mongolian, Ossetic, Selkup (Ostyak-Samoyed), Tajik,
Tatar, Turkmen, Tuvinian, Uzbek and Yakut.
Completely supported by the following font faces: Fixed (all sizes).
CyrKoi
Supports entirely the 8-bit encodings KOI8-R and KOI8-U. Suitable for
Russian and Ukrainian when one of these two encodings is used.
Completely covered by the following font faces (in all sizes): Fixed,
Terminus, TerminusBold, TerminusBoldVGA and VGA.
CyrSlav
Supports entirely the 8-bit encodings ISO-8859-5 and CP1251. Suitable
the Slavic Cyrillic languages - Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian,
Russian, Serbian and Ukrainian. For Serbian both the Cyrillic and the
Latin alphabets are supported.
Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (all sizes), Ter-
minus (all sizes), TerminusBold (all sizes), TerminusBoldVGA (all
sizes), VGA (sizes 8x16 and 16x32).
Ethiopian (a big codeset)
Supports Amharic, Ethiopic (Geez), Tigre and Tigrinya.
This codeset is partially covered by the following font faces: Fixed
(sizes 8x15 and 8x18), Goha (all sizes) and GohaClassic (all sizes).
Georgian
Supported language: Georgian.
Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (all sizes).
Greek
Supported language: Greek.
Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (all sizes) and
VGA (sizes 8x16 and 16x32).
Hebrew
Supported languages: Hebrew and Yiddish.
Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (sizes 8x13,
8x15, 8x16 and 8x18) and VGA (sizes 8x16 and 16x32).
Lao
Supported languages: Lao.
Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (sizes 8x15 and
8x16).
Lat15
Covers entirely ISO-8859-1, ISO-8859-9 and ISO-8859-15. Suitable for
the so called Latin1 and Latin5 languages - Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian,
Aragonese, Asturian, Aymara, Basque, Bislama, Breton, Catalan, Chamor-
ro, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Finnish, French,
Frisian, Friulian, Galician, German, Hiri Motu, Icelandic, Ido, Indone-
sian, Interlingua, Interlingue, Italian, Low Saxon, Lule Sami, Luxem-
bourgish, Malagasy, Manx Gaelic, Norwegian Bokmal, Norwegian Nynorsk,
Occitan, Oromo or Galla, Portuguese, Rhaeto-Romance (Romansch), Scots
Gaelic, Somali, South Sami, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tswana, Turkish,
Volapuk, Votic, Walloon, Xhosa, Yapese and Zulu.
Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (all sizes), Ter-
minus (all sizes), TerminusBold (all sizes), TerminusBoldVGA (all
sizes), VGA (sizes 8x16 and 16x32).
Lat2
Covers entirely ISO-8859-2. The Euro sign and the Romanian letters
with comma below are also supported. Suitable for the so called Latin2
languages - Bosnian, Croatian, Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, Slo-
vak, Slovenian and Sorbian (lower and upper).
Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (all sizes), Ter-
minus (all sizes), TerminusBold (all sizes), TerminusBoldVGA (all
sizes), VGA (sizes 8x16 and 16x32).
Lat38
Covers entirely ISO-8859-3 and ISO-8859-14. Suitable for Chichewa Es-
peranto, Irish, Maltese and Welsh.
Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (all sizes) and
VGA (sizes 8x16 and 16x32).
Lat7
Covers entirely ISO-8859-13. Suitable for Lithuanian, Latvian, Maori
and Marshallese.
Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (all sizes), Ter-
minus (all sizes), TerminusBold (all sizes), TerminusBoldVGA (all
sizes), VGA (sizes 8x16 and 16x32).
Thai
Supported language: Thai.
Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (all sizes).
Uni1 (a big codeset)
Supports most of the Latin languages, the Slavic Cyrillic languages,
Hebrew and barely Arabic.
Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (sizes 8x15 and
8x16) and VGA (all sizes).
Uni2 (a big codeset)
Supports most of the Latin languages, the Slavic Cyrillic languages and
Greek.
Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (all sizes) and
VGA (sizes 8x16 and 16x32).
Uni3 (a big codeset)
Supports most of the Latin and Cyrillic languages.
Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (all sizes).
Vietnamese (a big codeset)
Supported language: Vietnamese.
Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (sizes 8x13,
8x15, 8x16 and 8x18).
FILES
The standard location of the console-setup configuration file is
/etc/default/console-setup. The keyboard configuration is in /etc/de-
fault/keyboard. Fonts that can be used with the variable FONT are usu-
ally installed in /usr/share/consolefonts/ or
/usr/share/syscons/fonts/. Translation maps that can be used with the
variable CONSOLE_MAP are usually installed in /usr/share/consoletrans/
or /usr/share/syscons/scrnmaps/.
NOTES
The aim of the Terminus font is to reduce the eyes-fatigue when one has
to read a lot. Currently this font supports only the Latin, the Cyril-
lic and the Greek scripts (the Lat15, Lat2, Lat7, CyrAsia, CyrKoi,
CyrSlav, Greek, Uni2 and Uni3 codesets).
The fonts with font face TerminusBoldVGA are optimized for use with
regular text video modes. They should not be used with framebuffer
video modes. The fonts with font face TerminusBold are optimized for
use with the framebuffer video modes. The fonts with font face Termi-
nus can be used in all video modes.
SEE ALSO
setupcon(1), keyboard(5), setfont(8), vidcontrol(1)
console-setup 2011-03-17 CONSOLE-SETUP(5)
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