VCONSOLE.CONF(5)

NAME
vconsole.conf - Configuration file for the virtual console

SYNOPSIS

/etc/vconsole.conf

DESCRIPTION

The /etc/vconsole.conf file configures the virtual console, i.e. keyboard mapping and console font. It is applied at boot by udev using 90-vconsole.rules file. You can safely mask this file if you want to avoid this kind of initialization.

The format of vconsole.conf is a newline-separated list of environment-like shell-compatible variable assignments, ignoring comments and empty lines. It is possible to source the configuration from shell scripts, however, beyond mere variable assignments no shell features are supported, allowing applications to read the file without implementing a shell compatible execution engine. See os-release(5) for a detailed description of the format.

Note that the kernel command line options vconsole.keymap=, vconsole.keymap_toggle=, vconsole.font=, vconsole.font_map=, vconsole.font_unimap= may be used to override the console settings at boot.

Depending on the operating system other configuration files might be checked for configuration of the virtual console as well, however only as fallback.

If the boot loader reports the firmware-configured keyboard layout via the LoaderKeyboardLayout EFI variable (see the Boot Loader Interface[1]), it is used as the lowest-priority fallback for KEYMAP=. Any setting from credentials, /etc/vconsole.conf, or the kernel command line overrides it.

/etc/vconsole.conf is usually created and updated using systemd-localed.service(8). localectl(1) may be used to instruct systemd-localed.service to query or update configuration.

OPTIONS

The following options are understood:

KEYMAP=, KEYMAP_TOGGLE=
    Configures the key mapping table for the keyboard. KEYMAP= defaults to "us" if not set. As a special case, if "@kernel" is specified, no keymap will be loaded, i.e. the kernel's default keymap will be used. The KEYMAP_TOGGLE= can be used to configure a second toggle keymap and is by default unset.

FONT=, FONT_MAP=, FONT_UNIMAP=
    Configures the console font, the console map and the unicode font map.

KERNEL COMMAND LINE

A few configuration parameters from vconsole.conf may be overridden on the kernel command line:

vconsole.keymap=, vconsole.keymap_toggle=
    Overrides KEYMAP= and KEYMAP_TOGGLE=.

    Added in version 232.

vconsole.font=, vconsole.font_map=, vconsole.font_unimap=
    Overrides FONT=, FONT_MAP=, and FONT_UNIMAP=.

    Added in version 232.

EXAMPLE

Example 1. German keyboard and console

/etc/vconsole.conf:

    KEYMAP=de-latin1
    FONT=eurlatgr

SEE ALSO

systemd(1), systemd-vconsole-setup.service(8), loadkeys(1), setfont(8), locale.conf(5), systemd-localed.service(8)

NOTES

1.  Boot Loader Interface
    https://systemd.io/BOOT_LOADER_INTERFACE