VBETOOL(8)



VBETOOL(8)                       User Commands                      VBETOOL(8)

NAME
       vbetool - run real-mode video BIOS code to alter hardware state

SYNOPSIS
       vbetool   [[vbestate   save|restore]|[vbemode  set|get]|[vgamode]|[dpms
       on|off|standby|suspend|reduced]|[post              [romfile]]|[vgastate
       on|off]|[vbefp panelid|panelsize|getbrightness|setbrightness|invert]]

DESCRIPTION
       vbetool  uses lrmi in order to run code from the video BIOS. Currently,
       it is able to alter DPMS states, save/restore video card state and  at-
       tempt to initialize the video card from scratch.

OPTIONS
       vbetool takes the following options:

       vbestate
              vbetool  will  use the VESA 0x4f0f extensions to save or restore
              hardware state. This will be sent to or read  from  stdin.  This
              information  is highly hardware specific - do not attempt to re-
              store state saved from a different machine.  This  command  will
              not  work  unless  you  are  at a text console, as it interferes
              badly with X.

       dpms   vbetool will use the VESA 0x4f10 extensions to alter  the  power
              management  state  of your screen. "On", "off", "standby", "sus-
              pend" and "reduced" are acceptable further options and determine
              which state will be activated.

       vbemode
              vbetool will get or set the current VESA mode. "get" will return
              the current mode number on stdout - "set" will set the  mode  to
              the next argument.

       vgamode
              vbetool  will  set  the legacy VGA mode to the following numeric
              argument.

       post   vbetool will attempt to run BIOS code located at c000:0003. This
              is  the  code  run  by  the system BIOS at boot in order to ini-
              tialise the video hardware. Note that on  some  machines  (espe-
              cially  laptops),  not  all of this code is present after system
              boot - as a result, executing this command may result  in  unde-
              fined  behaviour.  This command must be run from a text console,
              as it will otherwise interfere with the  operation  of  X.  This
              command  takes  an  optional argument which is the location of a
              file containing a ROM image. If provided,  this  image  will  be
              mapped  to  the  c000  segment  and used instead of the system's
              video BIOS.

       vgastate
              vbetool will enable or disable the current video card.  On  most
              hardware,  disabling  will cause the hardware to stop responding
              until it is re-enabled. You probably don't want to  do  this  if
              you're using a framebuffer.

       vbefp  vbetool will execute a VESA flat panel interface call.

              panelid will provide information about the panel

              panelsize will provide the size of the panel

              getbrightness  will  provide the current screen brightness as an
              integer

              setbrightness accepts an integer as an argument and will set the
              screen brightness to that

              invert will invert the colours of the screen

BUGS
       Switching dpms modes may interact badly with X on some systems.

       The vbestate command may behave in strange ways.

       The  post  command  may  result in the execution of arbitrary code that
       happens to be lying around in the area where chunks of your video  BIOS
       used to be.

       The VESA specification does not require that "vbemode get" provides the
       correct mode if the current mode was set via some means other than  the
       VESA BIOS extensions.

       The VESA flat panel interface ceased development at the proposal stage.
       panelid and panelsize will work on many machines, but the  other  argu-
       ments are unlikely to be implemented on available hardware.

AUTHOR
       vbetool  was written by Matthew Garrett <mjg59@srcf.ucam.org>, based on
       code  from  read-edid   by   John   Fremlin   <john@fremlin.de>,   LRMI
       (http://sourceforge.net/projects/lrmi/)            and            XFree
       (http://www.xfree86.org). It is released under the  terms  of  the  GNU
       General Public License.

vbetool 0.2                    31 December 2004                     VBETOOL(8)

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