Ubuntu Manpage: console-setup - configuration file for setupcon

name
description
options
codesets
files
notes
see also

Provided by: console-setup_1.226ubuntu1_all

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 supported 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
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 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 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/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 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 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 codesets are: Arabic, Ethiopian, Uni1, Uni2, Uni3 and Vietnamese. Only small
codesets can be used on FreeBSD. See below the section 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 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 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 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 somewhat 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 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, 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, 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), 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,
       Chamorro, Danish,  Dutch,  English,  Estonian,  Faroese,  Fijian,  Finnish,  French,  Frisian,  Friulian,
       Galician,  German,  Hiri  Motu, Icelandic, Ido, Indonesian, Interlingua, Interlingue, Italian, Low Saxon,
       Lule Sami, Luxembourgish, 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),  Terminus  (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,
       Slovak, Slovenian and Sorbian (lower and upper).

       Completely  covered  by  the  following font faces: Fixed (all sizes), Terminus (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 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),  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/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.  Currently 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.