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vidcontrol(1)

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 cho-
	     sen.  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 sup-
	     ported 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 sim-
	     ulation.

     -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

     -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 hard-
     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
     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 the raster text mode VESA_800x600, you need to recom-
     pile 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 cap-
     ture the current contents of the video buffer.  The vidcontrol utility
     writes version and additional information to the standard output, fol-
     lowed by the contents of the terminal device.

     VGA video memory is typically arranged in two byte tuples, one per char-
     acter 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:

     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

	   65 158

     specify an uppercase A (character code 65), blinking (bit 7 set) in yel-
     low (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 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 ter-
     minal, 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

     Soren Schmidt <sos@FreeBSD.org>

CONTRIBUTORS

     Maxim Sobolev <sobomax@FreeBSD.org>, Nik Clayton <nik@FreeBSD.org>

FreeBSD 5.4			 May 27, 2002			   FreeBSD 5.4

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