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 supported 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 consolechars(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 variable also the special value guess. It will cause setupcon(1) to attempt to guess the active virtual consoles by looking in configuration 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 desired 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 codesets are: Arabic, Ethiopian, Uni1, Uni2, Uni3 and Vietnamese. Only small codesets can be used on FreeBSD. See below the section 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 configure only the keyboard and to leave the console font unchanged.

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 separated 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.

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 covering big codesets will reduce the number of available foreground colors.

FILES¶

The standard location of the console-setup configuration file is /etc/default/console-setup. The keyboard configuration is in /etc/default/keyboard. Fonts that can be used with the variable FONT are usually installed in /usr/share/consolefonts/ or /lib/kbd/consolefonts/. Translation maps that can be used with the variable CONSOLE_MAP are usually installed in /usr/share/consoletrans/ or /lib/kbd/consoletrans/.

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 Cyrillic 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 Terminus can be used in all video modes.

SEE ALSO¶

setupcon(1), keyboard(5), setfont(1), consolechars(1), vidcontrol(1)