man > 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 rec‐
       ommended 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 cor‐
       respondence  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 cer‐
       tain possible sizes.  On FreeBSD only 8x16, 8x14 and 8x8 are valid sizes.  On Linux if frame‐
       buffer 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 se‐
       lected 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/init‐
              tab 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 code‐
              set 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 be‐
              low the section entitled “CODESETS” for detailed description of each  of  these  code‐
              sets.


       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  vari‐
              able  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  accord‐
              ing to the size of the loaded font.


       BEEP   This  variable  controls  the  style of the system beep on the console.  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 your‐
              self 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).  On‐
       ly 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.


   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 - Abkhazia, Avaric, Azerbai‐
       jani, 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, Russian, Serbian and Ukrainian.  For Serbian
       both the Cyrillic and the Latin alphabets are supported.

       Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (all sizes), Terminus (all sizes), Ter‐
       minusBold (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, Bisla‐
       ma, Breton, Catalan, Chamorro, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian,  Faroese,  Fijian,  Finnish,
       French, Frisian, Friulian, Galician, German, Hiri Motu, Icelandic, Ido, Indonesian, Interlin‐
       gua, Interlingue, Italian, Low Saxon, Lule Sami, Luxembourgish, Malagasy, Manx Gaelic, Norwe‐
       gian  Bokmal,  Norwegian Nynorsk, Occitan, Oromo or Galla, Portuguese, Rhaeto-Romance (Roman‐
       sch), 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), Terminus (all sizes), Ter‐
       minusBold (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, Hungari‐
       an, Polish, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian and Sorbian (lower and upper).

       Completely covered by the following font faces: Fixed (all sizes), Terminus (all sizes), Ter‐
       minusBold (all sizes), TerminusBoldVGA (all sizes), VGA (sizes 8x16 and 16x32).


   Lat38
       Covers entirely ISO-8859-3 and ISO-8859-14.  Suitable for Chichewa Esperanto, 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), Terminus (all sizes), Ter‐
       minusBold (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  Ara‐
       bic.

       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/default/keyboard.  Fonts that  can  be  used  with  the
       variable FONT are usually 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.   Cur‐
       rently  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(8), vidcontrol(1)


console-setup                                2011-03-17                             CONSOLE-SETUP(5)