2 .\" vidcontrol - a utility for manipulating the syscons video driver
4 .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
5 .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
7 .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
8 .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
9 .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
10 .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
11 .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
14 .\" $FreeBSD: src/usr.sbin/vidcontrol/vidcontrol.1,v 1.24.2.14 2002/09/15 22:31:50 dd Exp $
15 .\" $DragonFly: src/usr.sbin/vidcontrol/vidcontrol.1,v 1.4 2005/07/14 20:44:32 swildner Exp $
22 .Nd system console control and configuration utility
27 .Op Fl c Ar appearance
35 .Op Fl i Cm adapter | mode
36 .Op Fl l Ar screen_map
39 .Op Fl r Ar foreground Ar background
42 .Op Fl t Ar N | Cm off
44 .Op Ar foreground Op Ar background
49 command is used to set various options for the
52 such as video mode, colors, cursor shape, screen output map, font and screen
55 The following command line options are supported:
56 .Bl -tag -width indent
58 Select a new video mode.
59 The modes currently recognized are:
92 Alternatively, a mode can be specified with its number by using a mode name of
95 A list of valid mode numbers can be obtained with the
98 .Sx Video Mode Support
100 .It Ar foreground Op Ar background
101 Change colors when displaying text.
102 Specify the foreground color
104 .Dq vidcontrol white ) ,
105 or both a foreground and background colors
107 .Dq vidcontrol yellow blue ) .
110 command below to see available colors.
112 See the supported colors on a given platform.
116 This option may not be always supported by the video driver.
118 Clear the history buffer.
119 .It Fl c Cm normal | blink | destructive
120 Change the cursor appearance.
121 The cursor is either an inverting block
125 or it can be like the old hardware cursor
127 The latter is actually a simulation.
129 Print out current output screen map.
144 The font file can be either uuencoded or in raw binary format.
145 You can also use the menu-driven
147 command to load the font of your choice.
150 may be omitted, in this case
152 will try to guess it from the size of font file.
155 .Sx Video Mode Support
158 below and the man page for
163 of the text mode for the modes with selectable
165 Currently only raster modes, such as
169 .Sx Video Mode Support
174 Set the size of the history (scrollback) buffer to
178 Shows info about the current video adapter.
180 Shows the possible video modes with the current video hardware.
181 .It Fl l Ar screen_map
182 Install screen output map file from
187 Install default screen output map.
189 Sets the base character used to render the mouse pointer to
192 Switch the mouse pointer
196 Used together with the
198 daemon for text mode cut & paste functionality.
200 Capture the current contents of the video buffer corresponding
201 to the terminal device referred to by standard input.
204 utility writes contents of the video buffer to the standard
205 output in a raw binary format.
206 For details about that
208 .Sx Format of Video Buffer Dump
213 but dump contents of the video buffer in a plain text format
214 ignoring nonprintable characters and information about text
216 .It Fl r Ar foreground background
217 Change reverse mode colors to
222 Turn vty switching on or off.
223 When vty switching is off,
224 attempts to switch to a different virtual terminal will fail.
225 (The default is to permit vty switching.)
227 Set the current vty to
229 .It Fl t Ar N | Cm off
230 Set the screensaver timeout to
235 Use hexadecimal digits for output.
237 .Ss Video Mode Support
238 Note that not all modes listed above may be supported by the video
240 You can verify which mode is supported by the video hardware, using the
244 The VESA BIOS support must be linked to the kernel
245 or loaded as a KLD module if you wish to use VESA video modes
250 You need to compile your kernel with the
252 option if you wish to use VGA 90 column modes
256 Video modes other than 25 and 30 line modes may require specific size of font.
259 option above to load a font file to the kernel.
260 If the required size of font has not been loaded to the kernel,
262 will fail if the user attempts to set a new video mode.
264 .Bl -column "25 line modes" "8x16 (VGA), 8x14 (EGA)" -compact
265 .Sy Modes Ta Sy Font size
266 .Li 25 line modes Ta 8x16 (VGA), 8x14 (EGA)
267 .Li 30 line modes Ta 8x16
268 .Li 43 line modes Ta 8x8
269 .Li 50 line modes Ta 8x8
270 .Li 60 line modes Ta 8x8
273 It is better to always load all three sizes (8x8, 8x14 and 8x16)
276 You may set variables in
279 .Pa /etc/rc.conf.local
280 so that desired font files will be automatically loaded
281 when the system starts up.
284 If you want to use any of the raster text modes you need to recompile your
290 for more details on this kernel option.
291 .Ss Format of Video Buffer Dump
298 to capture the current contents of the video buffer.
301 utility writes version and additional information to the standard
302 output, followed by the contents of the terminal device.
304 PC video memory is typically arranged in two byte tuples,
305 one per character position.
306 In each tuple, the first byte
307 will be the character code, and the second byte is the
308 character's color attribute.
310 The color attribute byte is further broken down in to the
311 low nibble, which specifies which of 16 different foreground
312 colors is active, and the high nibble, which specifies which
313 of 16 different background colors is active.
315 .Bl -hang -offset indent -compact
350 It can be seen that the last 8 colors are brighter
351 versions of the first 8.
353 For example, the two bytes
357 specify an uppercase A (character code 65), in
358 yellow (low nibble 15) on a light blue background
363 output contains a small header which includes additional
364 information which may be useful to utilities processing
367 The first 10 bytes are always arranged as follows:
368 .Bl -column "Byte range" "Contents" -offset indent
369 .It Sy "Byte Range Contents"
370 .It "1 thru 8 Literal text" Dq Li SCRSHOT_
371 .It "9 File format version number"
372 .It "10 Remaining number of bytes in the header"
375 Subsequent bytes depend on the version number.
376 .Bl -column "Version" "13 and up" -offset indent
377 .It Sy "Version Byte Meaning"
378 .It "1 11 Terminal width, in characters"
379 .It " 12 Terminal depth, in characters"
380 .It " 13 and up The snapshot data"
383 So a dump of an 80x25 screen would start (in hex)
384 .Bd -literal -offset indent
385 53 43 52 53 48 4f 54 5f 01 02 50 19
386 ----------------------- -- -- -- --
388 | | | `--- 80 decimal
389 | | `------ 2 remaining bytes of header data
390 | `--------- File format version 1
391 `------------------------ Literal "SCRSHOT_"
393 .Sh VIDEO OUTPUT CONFIGURATION
394 .Ss Boot Time Configuration
395 You may set the following variables in
398 .Pa /etc/rc.conf.local
399 in order to configure the video output at boot time.
401 .Bl -tag -width foo_bar_var -compact
403 Sets the timeout value for the
406 .It Ar font8x16 , font8x14 , font8x8
407 Specifies font files for the
411 Specifies a screen output map file for the
419 .Ss Driver Configuration
420 The video card driver may let you change default configuration
421 options, such as the default font, so that you do not need to set up
422 the options at boot time.
423 See video card driver manuals, (e.g.\&
427 .Bl -tag -width /usr/share/syscons/scrnmaps/foo-bar -compact
428 .It Pa /usr/share/syscons/fonts/*
430 .It Pa /usr/share/syscons/scrnmaps/*
431 screen output map files.
435 .Pa /usr/share/syscons/fonts/iso-8x16.fnt
440 .Dl vidcontrol -f 8x16 /usr/share/syscons/fonts/iso-8x16.fnt
442 So long as the font file is in
443 .Pa /usr/share/syscons/fonts ,
444 you may abbreviate the file name as
447 .Dl vidcontrol -f 8x16 iso-8x16
449 Furthermore, you can also omit font size
452 .Dl vidcontrol -f iso-8x16
454 Moreover, the suffix specifying the font size can be also omitted; in
457 will use the size of the currently displayed font to construct the
460 .Dl vidcontrol -f iso
462 Likewise, you can also abbreviate the screen output map file name for
465 option if the file is found in
466 .Pa /usr/share/syscons/scrnmaps .
468 .Dl vidcontrol -l iso-8859-1_to_cp437
470 The above command will load
471 .Pa /usr/share/syscons/scrnmaps/iso-8859-1_to_cp437.scm .
473 The following command will set-up a 100x37 raster text mode (useful for
476 .Dl vidcontrol -g 100x37 VESA_800x600
478 The following command will capture the contents of the first virtual
479 terminal, and redirect the output to the
483 .Dl vidcontrol -p < /dev/ttyv0 > shot.scr
485 The following command will dump contents of the fourth virtual terminal
486 to the standard output in the human readable format:
488 .Dl vidcontrol -P < /dev/ttyv3
508 .Em "Ports Collection" .
510 .An S\(/oren Schmidt Aq sos@FreeBSD.org