console-setup(5)



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, Rus-
       sian, 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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