VBETOOL(1)                                                         User Commands                                                        VBETOOL(1)

NAME

       vbetool - run real-mode video BIOS code to alter hardware state

SYNOPSIS

       vbetool    [[vbestate    save|restore]|[vbemode    set|get]|[vgamode]|[dpms    on|off|standby|suspend|reduced]|[post   [romfile]]|[vgastate
       on|off]|[vbefp panelid|panelsize|getbrightness|setbrightness|invert]]

DESCRIPTION

       vbetool uses lrmi in order to run code from the video BIOS. Currently, it is able to alter DPMS states, save/restore video card  state  and
       attempt to initialize the video card from scratch.

OPTIONS

       vbetool takes the following options:

       vbestate
              vbetool  will use the VESA 0x4f0f extensions to save or restore hardware state. This will be sent to or read from stdin. This infor-
              mation is highly hardware specific - do not attempt to restore state saved from a different machine.  This  command  will  not  work
              unless you are at a text console, as it interferes badly with X.

       dpms   vbetool  will  use  the VESA 0x4f10 extensions to alter the power management state of your screen. "On", "off", "standby", "suspend"
              and "reduced" are acceptable further options and determine which state will be activated.

       vbemode
              vbetool will get or set the current VESA mode. "get" will return the current mode number on stdout - "set" will set the mode to  the
              next argument.

       vgamode
              vbetool will set the legacy VGA mode to the following numeric argument.

       post   vbetool  will  attempt  to run BIOS code located at c000:0003. This is the code run by the system BIOS at boot in order to intialise
              the video hardware. Note that on some machines (especially laptops), not all of this code is  present  after  system  boot  -  as  a
              result, executing this command may result in undefined behaviour. This command must be run from a text console, as it will otherwise
              interfere with the operation of X. This command takes an optional argument which is the location of a file containing a  ROM  image.
              If provided, this image will be mapped to the c000 segment and used instead of the system's video BIOS.

       vgastate
              vbetool  will enable or disable the current video card. On most hardware, disabling will cause the hardware to stop responding until
              it is reenabled. You probably don't want to do this if you're using a framebuffer.

       vbefp  vbetool will execute a VESA flat panel interface call.

              panelid will provide information about the panel

              panelsize will provide the size of the panel

              getbrightness will provide the current screen brightness as an integer

              setbrightness accepts an integer as an argument and will set the screen brightness to that

              invert will invert the colours of the screen

BUGS

       Switching dpms modes may interact badly with X on some systems.

       The vbestate command may behave in strange ways.

       The post command may result in the execution of arbitrary code that happens to be lying around in the area where chunks of your video  BIOS
       used to be.

       The  VESA specification does not require that "vbemode get" provides the correct mode if the current mode was set via some means other than
       the VESA BIOS extensions.

       The VESA flat panel interface ceased development at the proposal stage.  panelid and panelsize will work on many machines,  but  the  other
       arguments are unlikely to be implemented on available hardware.

AUTHOR

       vbetool  was  written  by  Matthew  Garrett  <mjg59@srcf.ucam.org>,  based  on  code from read-edid by John Fremlin <john@fremlin.de>, LRMI
       (http://sourceforge.net/projects/lrmi/) and XFree (http://www.xfree86.org). It is released under  the  terms  of  the  GNU  General  Public
       License.

vbetool 0.2                                                      31 December 2004                                                       VBETOOL(1)