vidcontrol(1)

NAME

vidcontrol - system console control and configuration utili
ty

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 recog
nized 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. Alternatively, a mode can be specified with
its number by
using a mode name of the form MODE_<NUMBER>. A list
of valid
mode numbers can be obtained with the -i mode op
tion. 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 function
ality.
-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 informa
tion 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 pro
tection 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 spe
cific size of
font. Use -f option above to load a font file to the ker
nel. 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
25 line modes 8x16 (VGA), 8x14 (EGA)
30 line modes 8x16
43 line modes 8x8
50 line modes 8x8
60 line modes 8x8
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 any of the raster text modes 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 at
tribute.
The VGA color attribute byte looks like this:
bits# width meaning
7 <X0000000> 1 character blinking
6:4 <0XXX0000> 3 background color
3 <0000X000> 1 bright foreground color
2:0 <00000XXX> 3 foreground color
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 ver
sion 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 configura
tion 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 vir
tual 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

Soren Schmidt <sos@FreeBSD.org>
Sascha Wildner

CONTRIBUTORS

Maxim Sobolev <sobomax@FreeBSD.org>, Nik Clayton <nik@FreeB
SD.org>
BSD May 29, 2005
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