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The following topics are addressed:
1) THE OUTPUT ON THE CONSOLE
1.1) The font is broken after I switch to X and back to the console
1.2) The screen size is wrong. The buttom 2-3 lines are cut off
1.3) How can I load the big fonts?
1.4) How to enlarge the image on the screen of my laptop?
1.5) The symbols on the screen of my LCD are ugly
1.6) I can not use my boot splash screen program or SVGATextMode!
2) THE INPUT ON THE CONSOLE
2.1) I cannot type any non-ASCII character. How do I fix the keymap?
2.2) The layouts toggle wrong when three keyboard layouts are set!
2.3) Where is the Dvorak keyboard?
2.4) Why the Backspace key doesn't work properly?
2.5) Why doesn't the CapsLock led work?
1) THE OUTPUT ON THE CONSOLE
1.1) The font is broken after I switch to X and back to the console
Actually the boot-time font replaces the font of console-setup. In
most cases this means the non-ASCII symbols are replaced by some
other funny symbols.
This happens because sometimes the X video driver is unable to
restore properly the state of the console when you switch from X to
text-mode. How severe the problem is depends on the combination
Video-card/X-driver you use.
Notice that all this can happen only if the console is in
text-mode, i.e. you are not using framebuffer. If you add to
/etc/modules the kernel module for framebuffer you will be able to
switch from X to console whenever you want and the font will never
be broken.
Sometimes the problem doesn't exists at all. It is rumored that
some old video adapters (more than 10 years old) fall in this
category but I have never seen such videocard.
The most common case seams to be that the state at the time the X
server is started is remembered. Try to setup the console before X
Window is started and if the problem disappears then you are in
this category. The problem will reappear if you change the console
setup while X Window is already started. All video adapters I have
had are in this category.
And sometimes the console setup is never remembered. In this case
you will have to use framebuffer (try "modprobe vga16fb"). Another
uption is to to use the "setupcon" utility whenever you need to
restore the console setup and hope that the problem will be fixed
in some future version of X Window. You may want to send a bug
report to the X developers.
Some chipsets might require specific video driver options in order
to restore all console settings correctly. For example, if you
selected any font size other than 16 for console, it is necessary
to add the following line into "Device" section of xorg.conf when
using i810 driver with some integrated graphics controllers:
Option "VBERestore" "true"
Please, read 'man i810' (or 'man <your driver name>') for
additional information and, more importantly, for warnings on using
the options.
1.2) The screen size is wrong. The buttom 2-3 lines are cut off
The reason and the fix of the problem are the same as in the
previous question. I suppose you use X Window and you set on the
console a font whose size is not the same as the size of the font
that was active when X Window was started. Then the following
happens:
1. When X Window is started the X server remembers the active
font (let this be font A).
2. You use the Ctrl+Alt+F1 combination and then you change the
font on the console (let this be font B). However the X
server doesn't want to know about this.
3. You return to X (Alt+F7).
4. Again Ctrl+Alt+F1. The X server restores font A. However
the kernel doesn't know that B is no more the active font.
5. If font A has say 16 scan lines and font B has 14 scan lines
the font on the screen has 16 scan lines but the kernel
doesn't know this and draws the screen as if the scan lines
were only 14. The result is that the bottom lines are
outside the screen.
1.3) How can I load the big fonts?
First, "consolechars" can not load big font. But most current
systems use "setfont" and "setfont" can load big fonts.
Second, the big fonts require framebuffer. This is hardware
limitation. The old 8514 videostandard had special text mode with
12x20 fonts but I suppose this video mode is not supported by the
kernel and it is unlikely that you own such video adapter anyway.
Third, the big fonts can not be used with some of the framebuffer
drivers. For example on my computer if I use matroxfb then all
font sizes work. However if I use vga16fb instead of matroxfb
then, all fonts load with no error messages but only the fonts with
size 14, 16 or 32x16 are displayed correctly.
1.4) How to enlarge the image on the screen of my laptop?
Many laptops do not scale the screen when the resolution is less
than the resolution of the display. And since the resolution of
the default text-mode is much lower than the resolution of the LCD
of the laptop (text mode: 720x400, LCD: at least 1024x768), only
the central part of the screen is used.
There are two ways to fix this. The first is to reconfigure the
laptop to scale the image and to use the whole screen. For many
laptops there is corresponding setting in the BIOS.
The second way is to use some high resolution framebufer mode in
combination with some of the large fonts of console-setup. The
drawback is that the screen will be slow.
1.5) The symbols on the screen of my LCD are ugly
The resolution of the text-mode is much lower than the resolution
of your LCD and because of that your LCD has to scale the image.
Unfortunately many LCD do not do this job well.
How well your LCD will perform in text mode doesn't depend much of
its price but rather by the company that produced it. Before you
buy an LCD you may want to check how it performs in text mode.
In order to fix this problem use high resolution framebuffer mode
in combination with some of the large fonts of console-setup. This
way you will have a slow but excellent and impressive screen.
1.6) I can not use my boot splash screen program or SVGATextMode!
Some programs that change the state of the console must reload the
console font. If this happens after the execution of the boot
script of console-setup, then the font of the console-setup will be
overwritten. Add a new boot script that simply executes 'setupcon'
(with no parameters) after these programs load their own font.
2) THE INPUT ON THE CONSOLE
2.1) I cannot type any non-ASCII character. How do I fix the keymap?
In most cases the keymap does not need a fix.
Are you sure that you have correct locale? For example if you use
ISO-8859-1 in Denmark, then the LANG environment variable should
have value "da_DK". With some distributions you also have to set
the LC_ALL environment variable.
Type the command 'locale charmap'. If you see "UTF-8" then you are
using an Unicode locale. Otherwise you are using an 8-bit
encoding. Now look at the setting CHARMAP in the configuration
file of console-setup (/etc/default/console-setup). If you are
using an Unicode locale then this setting has to be CHARMAP=UTF-8.
Otherwise it has to be something like CHARMAP=ISO-8859-15.
Are you sure also that your command interpreter accepts non-ASCII
symbols? Can you enter these characters in X in terminal emulator?
If not, then try to make a file ~/.inputrc with the following
contents:
set meta-flag on
set convert-meta off
set output-meta on
2.2) The layouts toggle wrong when three keyboard layouts are set!
Unfortunately it is impossible to implement three-layouts toggle on
the console. Because of this console-setup toggle them in the
following order Layout 1->Layout 2->Layout 1->Layout 3. If you
want different order, then use four-layout configuration. For
example if you use XKBLAYOUT=rs,rs,us,rs and XKBVARIANT=latin,,,
the layouts will be toggled in the following order:
Serbian Latin -> Serbian Cyrillic -> US -> Serbian Cyrillic
2.3) Where is the Dvorak keyboard?
The Dvorak layouts are variants of the national layouts. For
example if you want to use the Norwegian variant of the Dvorak
layout, use
XKBLAYOUT="no"
XKBVARIANT="dvorak"
in /etc/default/console-setup.
2.4) Why doesn't the Backspace key work properly?
When the console is in UTF-8 mode, then the Backspace doesn't work
properly for the non-ASCII symbols. This is a bug in the kernel.
If you want to make getty ignore the non-ASCII symbols, then add an
option -8 to it. For example in /etc/inittab you can have a line
like
1:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty -8 38400 tty1
2.5) Why doesn't the CapsLock led work?
This happens if your working encoding is UTF-8. Unfortunately due
to bugs in the kernel and possibly in loadkeys also, when the
console is in Unicode mode, CapsLock doesn't work for the non-ASCII
letters. That is why we decided to use regular modifiers instead
of CapsLock. We hope the kernel developers will find a better
solution of this problem.
When the console is not in UTF-8 mode CapsLock works as it should.
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