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 chosen. Alternatively, a mode can be specified with its number by using a mode name of the form MODE_<NUMBER>. A list of valid mode numbers can be obtained with the -i mode option. 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 supported 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 simulation.
-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 software font. See also Video Mode Support and EXAMPLES below and the man page for syscons(4).
-g geometry
Set the geometry of the text mode for the modes with selectable geometry. Currently only raster modes, such as VESA_800x600, support this option. See also Video Mode Support and EXAMPLES below.
-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.
