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In NetBSD versions before 1.4 the user could choose between two different drivers for screen and keyboard, pccons (specific for i386) and pcvt. In NetBSD 1.4 the new wscons multiplatform driver appeared, which has substituted the previous drivers, of which pccons is still supported as it uses less system ressources and is used for install floppies due to that.
Wscons is NetBSD's standard console driver. It offers virtual terminals on i386, support for international keyboards, mouse handling, etc. The capabilities of wscons can vary depending on the port, the i386 version is very feature rich.
The number of pre-allocated virtual console is controlled by the following option
options WSDISPLAY_DEFAULTSCREENS=4
Other consoles can be added by enabling the relevant lines in the
/etc/wscons.conf file: the comment mark (#) must
be removed from the lines beginning with “screen x”.
In the following example a fifth console is added to the four
pre-allocated ones:
# screens to create # idx screen emul #screen 0 - vt100 screen 1 - vt100 screen 2 - vt100 screen 3 - vt100 screen 4 - - #screen 4 80x25bf vt100 #screen 5 80x50 vt100
The rc.wscons script transforms each of the non
commented lines in a call to the wsconscfg command:
the columns become the parameters of the call. The
idx column becomes the index
parameter, the screen column becomes the
-t type parameter (which defines the type of screen:
rows and columns, number of colors, ...) and the
emul column becomes the -e emul
parameter, which defines the emulation. For example:
screen 3 - vt100
becomes a call to:
wsconscfg -e vt100 3
Please note that it is possible to have a (harmless)
conflict between the consoles
pre-allocated by the kernel and the consoles allocated at boot time
through /etc/wscons.conf.
If during boot the system tries to allocate an already allocated
screen, the following message will be displayed:
wsconscfg: WSDISPLAYIO_ADDSCREEN: Device busy
The soulution is to comment out the offending lines in
/etc/wscons.conf.
The virtual console must also be active in
/etc/ttys, so that NetBSD runs the
getty(8) program to ask for login. For example:
console "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" pc3 off secure ttyE0 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" vt220 on secure ttyE1 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" vt220 on secure ttyE2 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" vt220 on secure ttyE3 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" vt220 off secure ...
When starting up the X server, it will look for a virtual
console with no getty(8) program running, e.g. one console
should left as "off" in /etc/ttys. The
line
ttyE3 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" vt220 off secure
of /etc/ttys is used by the X server
for this purpose. To use a screen different from number 4, a
parameter of the form vtn must be passed to
the X server, where n is the number of the
function key used to activate the screen for X.
For example, “screen 7” could be enabled in
/etc/wscons.conf and X could be started with
“vt8”. If you use xdm you must
edit /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xdm/Xserver. For
example:
:0 local /usr/X11R6/bin/X +kb dpms -bpp 16 dpms vt8
For xdm3d the path is different:
/usr/X11R6/share/xdm3d/Xservers.
A text mode with 50 lines can be used starting with version 1.4.1 of
NetBSD. This mode is activated in the
/etc/wscons.conf. The following line must be
uncommented:
font ibm - 8 ibm /usr/share/pcvt/fonts/vt220l.808
Then the following lines must be modified:
#screen 0 80x50 vt100 screen 1 80x50 vt100 screen 2 80x50 vt100 screen 3 80x50 vt100 screen 4 80x50 vt100 screen 5 80x50 vt100 screen 6 80x50 vt100 screen 7 80x50 vt100
This configuration enables eight screens, which can be accessed with
the key combination Ctrl-Alt-Fn (where
n varies from 1 to 8); the corresponding devices
are ttyE0..ttyE7. To enable them and get a login prompt,
/etc/ttys must be modified:
ttyE0 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" vt220 on secure ttyE1 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" vt220 on secure ttyE2 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" vt220 on secure ttyE3 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" vt220 on secure ttyE4 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" vt220 on secure ttyE5 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" vt220 on secure ttyE6 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" vt220 on secure ttyE7 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" vt220 on secure
It is not possible to modify the 80x25 setting of screen 0, probably to guarantee that even in case of problems there is always a working screen.
Wscons also allows setting the keymap to map the keys on various national keyboards to the right characters. E.g. to set the keymap for an italian keymap, run:
#wsconsctl -k -w encoding=itencoding -> it
This setting will last until the next reboot.
To make it permanent, add a “encoding”line to
/etc/wscons.conf: it will be executed
automatically the next time you reboot.
#cp /etc/wscons.conf /etc/wscons.conf.orig#echo encoding it >>/etc/wscons.conf
Please be careful and type two “>” characters. If you type only one “>”, you will overwrite the file instead of adding a line. But that's why we always make backup files before touching critical files!
A full list of keyboard mappings can be found in
/usr/src/sys/dev/wscons/wsksymdef.h:
be - Belgian
de - German
dk - Danish
es - Spanish
fr - French
hu - Hungarian
it - Italian
jp - Japanese
no - Norwegian
pl - Polish
pt - Portuguese
ru - Russian
sf - Swiss French
sg - Swiss German
sv - Swedish
ua - Ukrainian
uk - UK-English
us - US-English
It is possible to use the mouse on the wscons console to mark (cut) text with one mouse button, and insert (paste) it again with another button. To enable cut&paste in wscons, you first need to build support for it into the kernel, which is disabled by default. To so so, enable the following option:
options WSDISPLAY_CHARFUNCS # mouse console support
Beware that this option won't work in
conjunction with the VGA_RASTERCONSOLE
option. See Chapter 28, Compiling the kernel for more
information on building the kernel.
After the kernel is built, enable "wsmoused" in
/etc/rc.conf, and start it:
#echo wsmoused=yes >>/etc/rc.conf#sh /etc/rc.d/wsmoused start
After that you can use the mouse to mark text with the left
mouse button, and paste it with the right one. To tune the
behaviour of wsmoused(8) see its manpage, which also
describes the format of the wsmoused.conf(5) config file,
an example of which can be found in
/usr/share/examples/wsmoused.
You can enable scrolling back on wscons consoles by compiling
the WSDISPLAY_SCROLLSUPPORT option into your
kernel. Make sure you don't have option
VGA_RASTERCONSOLE enabled at the same time
though! See Chapter 28, Compiling the kernel for instructions on
building a kernel.
When you have a kernel with options
WSDISPLAY_SCROLLSUPPORT running, you can
scroll up on the console by pressing LEFT SHIFT plus PAGE
UP/DOWN. Please note that this may not work on your system
console (ttyE0)!
This console driver doesn't offer virtual consoles and utility programs for configuration but takes up very little space. Due to this, it can be found on the i386 install floppy.
To enable it, put the following line in your kernel config file:
pc0 at isa? port 0x60 irq 1 # pccons generic PC console driver
You can also set one of several options to compile in a non-english keymap:
# Keyboard layout configuration for pccons #options FRENCH_KBD #options FINNISH_KBD #options GERMAN_KBD #options NORWEGIAN_KBD
Remove the comment character in front of one of this to enable the corresponding keymap, then follow the instructions in Chapter 28, Compiling the kernel to rebuild your kernel.
In general, you shouldn't need pccons though, and wscons should fit all your needs.