Manpages

NAME

vidcontrol — system console control and configuration utility

SYNOPSIS

vidcontrol [−CdLHPpx] [−b color] [−c appearance] [

−f [size] file ] [−g geometry] [−h size] [−i adapter | mode] [−l screen_map] [−M char] [−m on | off] [−r foreground background] [−S on | off] [−s number] [−t N | off] [mode] [foreground [background]] [show]

DESCRIPTION

The vidcontrol command is used to set various options for the syscons(4) console driver, such as video mode, colors, cursor shape, screen output map, font and screen saver timeout.

The following command line options are supported:

mode

Select a new video mode. The modes currently recognized are: 80x25, 80x30, 80x43, 80x50, 80x60, 132x25, 132x30, 132x43, 132x50, 132x60, VGA_40x25, VGA_80x25, VGA_80x30, VGA_80x50, VGA_80x60, VGA_90x25, VGA_90x30, VGA_90x43, VGA_90x50, VGA_90x60, EGA_80x25, EGA_80x43, VESA_132x25, VESA_132x43, VESA_132x50, VESA_132x60. The raster text mode VESA_800x600 can also be chosen. See Video Mode Support below.

foreground [background]

Change colors when displaying text. Specify the foreground color (e.g. ’’vidcontrol white’’), or both a foreground and background colors (e.g. ’’vidcontrol yellow blue’’). Use the show command below to see available colors.

show

See the supported colors on a given platform.

−b color

Set border color to color. This option may not be always supported by the video driver.

−C

Clear the history buffer.

−c normal | blink | destructive

Change the cursor appearance. The cursor is either an inverting block (normal) that can optionally blink, or it can be like the old hardware cursor (destructive). The latter is actually a simulation.

−d

Print out current output screen map.

−f [size] file

Load font file for size (currently, only 8x8, 8x14 or 8x16). The font file can be either uuencoded or in raw binary format. You can also use the menu-driven vidfont(1) command to load the font of your choice.

Size may be omitted, in this case vidcontrol will try to guess it from the size of font file.

Note that older video cards, such as MDA and CGA, do not support software font. See also Video Mode Support and EXAMPLES below and the man page for syscons(4).

−g geometry

Set the geometry of the text mode for the modes with selectable geometry. Currently only raster modes, such as VESA_800x600, support this option. See also Video Mode Support and EXAMPLES below.

−h size

Set the size of the history (scrollback) buffer to size lines.

−i adapter

Shows info about the current video adapter.

−i mode

Shows the possible video modes with the current video hardware.

−l screen_map

Install screen output map file from screen_map. See also syscons(4).

−L

Install default screen output map.

−M char

Sets the base character used to render the mouse pointer to char.

−m on | off

Switch the mouse pointer on or off. Used together with the moused(8) daemon for text mode cut & paste functionality.

−p

Capture the current contents of the video buffer corresponding to the terminal device referred to by standard input. The vidcontrol utility writes contents of the video buffer to the standard output in a raw binary format. For details about that format see Format of Video Buffer Dump below.

−P

Same as −p, but dump contents of the video buffer in a plain text format ignoring nonprintable characters and information about text attributes.

−H

When used with −p or −P, it instructs vidcontrol to dump full history buffer instead of visible portion of the video buffer only.

−r foreground background

Change reverse mode colors to foreground and background.

−S 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 DDB option. However, you probably should not compile the kernel debugger on a box which is supposed to be physically secure.

−s number

Set the current vty to number.

−t N | off

Set the screensaver timeout to N seconds, or turns it off.

−x

Use hexadecimal digits for output.

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 −i mode option.

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 vga(4)).

You need to compile your kernel with the VGA_WIDTH90 option if you wish to use VGA 90 column modes (see vga(4)).

Video modes other than 25 and 30 line modes may require specific size of font. Use −f option above to load a font file to the kernel. If the required size of font has not been loaded to the kernel, vidcontrol will fail if the user attempts to set a new video mode.

Modes Font size

It is better to always load all three sizes (8x8, 8x14 and 8x16) of the same font.

You may set variables in /etc/rc.conf or /etc/rc.conf.local so that desired font files will be automatically loaded when the system starts up. See below.

If you want to use the raster text mode VESA_800x600, you need to recompile your kernel with the SC_PIXEL_MODE option. See syscons(4) for more details on this kernel option.

Format of Video Buffer Dump
The vidcontrol utility uses the syscons(4) CONS_SCRSHOT ioctl(2) to capture the current contents of the video buffer. The vidcontrol utility writes version and additional information to the standard output, followed by the contents of the terminal device.

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.

The VGA color attribute byte looks like this:

Here is a list of the three bit wide base colors:

0

Black

1

Blue

2

Green

3

Cyan

4

Red

5

Magenta

6

Brown

7

Light Grey

Base colors with bit 3 (the bright foreground flag) set:

0

Dark Grey

1

Light Blue

2

Light Green

3

Light Cyan

4

Light Red

5

Light Magenta

6

Yellow

7

White

For example, the two bytes

65 158

specify an uppercase A (character code 65), blinking (bit 7 set) in yellow (bits 3:0) on a blue background (bits 6:4).

The vidcontrol output contains a small header which includes additional information which may be useful to utilities processing the output.

The first 10 bytes are always arranged as follows:

Byte Range Contents
1 thru 8 Literal text ’’SCRSHOT_’’
9 File format version number
10 Remaining number of bytes in the header

Subsequent bytes depend on the version number.

Version Byte Meaning
1 11 Terminal width, in characters
12 Terminal depth, in characters
13 and up The snapshot data

So a dump of an 80x25 screen would start (in hex)

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_"

VIDEO OUTPUT CONFIGURATION

Boot Time Configuration
You may set the following variables in /etc/rc.conf or /etc/rc.conf.local in order to configure the video output at boot time.

blanktime

Sets the timeout value for the −t option.

font8x16, font8x14, font8x8

Specifies font files for the −f option.

scrnmap

Specifies a screen output map file for the −l option.

See rc.conf(5) for more details.

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. vga(4)) for details.

FILES
/usr/share/syscons/fonts/*

font files.

/usr/share/syscons/scrnmaps/*

screen output map files.

EXAMPLES

If you want to load /usr/share/syscons/fonts/iso-8x16.fnt to the kernel, run vidcontrol as:

vidcontrol -f 8x16 /usr/share/syscons/fonts/iso-8x16.fnt

So long as the font file is in /usr/share/syscons/fonts, you may abbreviate the file name as iso-8x16:

vidcontrol -f 8x16 iso-8x16

Furthermore, you can also omit font size ’’8x16’’:

vidcontrol -f iso-8x16

Moreover, the suffix specifying the font size can be also omitted; in this case, vidcontrol will use the size of the currently displayed font to construct the suffix:

vidcontrol -f iso

Likewise, you can also abbreviate the screen output map file name for the −l option if the file is found in /usr/share/syscons/scrnmaps.

vidcontrol -l iso-8859-1_to_cp437

The above command will load /usr/share/syscons/scrnmaps/iso-8859-1_to_cp437.scm.

The following command will set-up a 100x37 raster text mode (useful for some LCD models):

vidcontrol -g 100x37 VESA_800x600

The following command will capture the contents of the first virtual terminal, and redirect the output to the shot.scr file:

vidcontrol -p < /dev/ttyv0 > shot.scr

The following command will dump contents of the fourth virtual terminal to the standard output in the human readable format:

vidcontrol -P < /dev/ttyv3

SEE ALSO

kbdcontrol(1), vidfont(1), keyboard(4), screen(4), syscons(4), vga(4), rc.conf(5), kldload(8), moused(8), watch(8)

The various scr2* utilities in the graphics and textproc categories of the Ports Collection.

AUTHORS

Søren Schmidt <sos [AT] FreeBSD.org>

CONTRIBUTORS

Maxim Sobolev <sobomax [AT] FreeBSD.org>, Nik Clayton <nik [AT] FreeBSD.org>

BSD May 27, 2002 BSD