SETUPCON(1) Console-setup User's Manual SETUPCON(1)NAME
setupcon - sets up the font and the keyboard on the console
SYNOPSIS
setupcon [OPTION]... [VARIANT]
DESCRIPTION
setupcon is a program for fast and easy setup of the font and the keyboard on the console. Most of the time you invoke setupcon without
arguments. The keyboard configuration is specified in ~/.keyboard or /etc/default/keyboard. The font configuration is specified in
~/.console-setup or /etc/default/console-setup. Consult keyboard(5) and console-setup(5) for instructions how to configure these two
files.
If you have to switch often between different encodings, keyboards or languages, you can prepare several alternative configuration files
for setupcon. Suppose that most of the time you will use Greek language with Greek keyboard layout, but sometimes you need to type in Ger-
man with German keyboard layout. In this situation you should customize the main configuration files (keyboard and console-setup) for
Greek. Create also alternative configuration files for German named keyboard.german and console-setup.german. Then in order to configure
the console for Greek you will simply run the command with no arguments: setupcon and in order to configure the console for German you will
use setupcon german.
OPTIONS -v, --verbose
Be more verbose. Use this option if something goes wrong or while experimenting with the configuration files.
-k, --keyboard-only
Setup the keyboard only, do not setup the font.
-f, --font-only
Setup the font only, do not setup the keyboard.
--force
Do not check whether we are on the console. Notice that you can be forced to hard-reboot your computer if you run setupcon with
this option and the screen is controlled by a X server.
--save This option can be useful if you want to use setupcon early in the boot process while /usr is not yet mounted and the required data
are not available. This option will make setupcon copy the required files in /etc/console-setup/ in order to make them available
before /usr is mounted. If you use setupcon early in the boot process, then you should run it with this option after every change
of the console configuration.
--save-only
The same as --save, but does not setup the keyboard and the font. This option can be useful if you want to save the required files
while the screen is controlled by a X server.
-h, --help
Display usage information.
VARIANT
Specifies which configuration file to use. By default the configuration files of setupcon are named console-setup and keyboard but
if you use e.g. chukchi as VARIANT then the configuration files will be console-setup.chukchi and keyboard.chukchi. In this way
you can have easy access to several different configurations - for example one for the Chukchi language and another for the default
configuration.
FILES
~/.console-setup
~/.keyboard
/etc/default/console-setup
/etc/default/keyboard
/etc/default/console-setup.VARIANT
/etc/default/keyboard.VARIANT
/etc/console-setup/
SEE ALSO keyboard(5), console-setup(5)console-setup 2011-03-17 SETUPCON(1)
Check Out this Related Man Page
KEYBOARD(5) Console-setup User's Manual KEYBOARD(5)NAME
keyboard - keyboard configuration file
DESCRIPTION
The keyboard file describes the properties of the keyboard. It is read by setupcon(1) in order to configure the keyboard on the console.
In Debian systems the default keyboard layout is described in /etc/default/keyboard and it is shared between X and the console.
The specification of the keyboard layout in the keyboard file is based on the XKB options XkbModel, XkbLayout, XkbVariant and XkbOptions.
Unfortunately, there is little documentation how to use them. Description of all possible values for these options can be found in the
file xorg.lst.
You might want to read "The XKB Configuration Guide" by Kamil Toman and Ivan U. Pascal:
http://www.xfree86.org/current/XKB-Config.html
Other possible readings are:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/X_KeyBoard_extension
http://pascal.tsu.ru/en/xkb/
http://www.charvolant.org/~doug/xkb/
The complete XKB-specification can be found on
http://xfree86.org/current/XKBproto.pdf
The file keyboard 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.
XKBMODEL
Specifies the XKB keyboard model name. Default: pc105 on most platforms.
XKBLAYOUT
Specifies the XKB keyboard layout name. This is usually the country or language type of the keyboard. Default: us on most platforms
XKBVARIANT
Specifies the XKB keyboard variant components. These can be used to further specify the keyboard layout details. Default: not set.
XKBOPTIONS
Specifies the XKB keyboard option components. Options usually relate to the behavior of the special keys (<Shift>, <Control>,
<Alt>, <CapsLock>, etc.) Default: not set.
BACKSPACE
Determines the behavior of <BackSpace> and <Delete> keys on the console. Allowed values: bs, del and guess. In most cases you can
specify guess here, in which case the current terminal settings and the kernel of your operating system will be used to determine
the correct value. Value bs specifies VT100-conformant behavior: <BackSpace> will generate ^H (ASCII BS) and <Delete> will generate
^? (ASCII DEL). Value del specifies VT220-conformant behavior: <BackSpace> will generate ^? (ASCII DEL) and <Delete> will gener-
ate a special function sequence.
KMAP Usually this variable will be unset but if you don't want to use a XKB layout on the console, you can specify an alternative keymap
here. Specify a file that is suitable as input for loadkeys(1) on Linux or for kbdcontrol(1) on FreeBSD.
FILES
The standard location of the keyboard file is /etc/default/keyboard. Description of all available keyboard models, layouts, variants and
options is available in /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/xorg.lst. In most cases, in /usr/share/keymaps/ or /usr/share/syscons/keymaps/ you will
find several keymaps that can be used with the variable KMAP.
NOTES
In Debian systems, changes in /etc/default/keyboard do not become immediately visible to X. You should either reboot the system, or use
udevadm trigger --subsystem-match=input --action=change
In order to activate the changes on the console, run setupcon(1).
BUGS
When a triple-layout is used on the console, i.e. a layout with three XKB groups, then the group toggling happens in the following way:
Group1 -> Group2 -> Group1 -> Group3.
On FreeBSD triple- and quadruple-layouts are not supported on the console (only the first and the second layout are taken into account).
The option grp:shifts_toggle is not supported on the console.
EXAMPLES
The following configuration will give you the standard US QWERTY layout (us). The key <Menu> will act as a compose key (compose:menu) and
<CapsLock> will act as third control key (ctrl:nocaps).
XKBLAYOUT=us
XKBVARIANT=
XKBOPTIONS=compose:menu,ctrl:nocaps
In the following configuration the right <Alt> key (grp:toggle) will toggle between US QWERTY layout (us) and Greek (gr) layout. The op-
tion grp_led:scroll is ignored on the console but in X in means to use the ScrollLock keyboard led as indicator for the current layout (US
or Greek).
XKBLAYOUT=us,gr
XKBVARIANT=
XKBOPTIONS=grp:toggle,grp_led:scroll
In the following configuration the <Control>+<Shift> key combination will toggle (grp:ctrl_shift_toggle) between French keyboard (fr) with-
out dead keys (nodeadkeys) and British (gb) "Dvorak" (dvorak) keyboard. The right <Win> key will be a compose-key (compose:rwin) and the
right <Alt> key will function as AltGr (lv3:lalt_switch).
XKBLAYOUT=fr,gb
XKBVARIANT=nodeadkeys,dvorak
XKBOPTIONS=grp:ctrl_shift_toggle,compose:rwin,lv3:ralt_switch
SEE ALSO setupcon(1), ckbcomp(1), console-setup(5), loadkeys(1), kbdcontrol(1)console-setup 2011-03-17 KEYBOARD(5)