SETUPCON(1)

🎀 SETUPCON(1) 🎀

Hiii bestie, this is the manual page for Console-setup User's Manual 💖 Let's get into it!

✨ NAME ✨

okay so setupcon is the thing that sets up the font and the keyboard on the console 🧚 literally that's the whole job 💅

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

setupcon [OPTION]... [VARIANT]

💜 DESCRIPTION 💜

okay so setupcon is a program for fast and easy setup of the font and the keyboard on the console ✨ Most of the time you just run setupcon with no arguments, no cap 🫶 The keyboard config lives in ~/.keyboard or /etc/default/keyboard. The font config lives in ~/.console-setup or /etc/default/console-setup. If you want the full tea on how to set up those two files, check out keyboard(5) and console-setup(5) 📚

If you keep switching between encodings, keyboards, or languages, you can make a bunch of alternative config files for setupcon 🌈 Say most of the time you're typing in Greek with a Greek keyboard layout, but sometimes you need German with a German layout 🇩🇪 In that case, customize the main config files (keyboard and console-setup) for Greek. Then make alternative files named keyboard.german and console-setup.german for German 🎀 To get Greek, you just run setupcon with no arguments. To get German, you run setupcon german. iykyk, it's so easy 😭

🦋 OPTIONS 🦋

• VARIANT — this picks which config file to use 🎀 With no variant, the files are called console-setup and keyboard. But if you pass something like chukchi as VARIANT, the files become console-setup.chukchi and keyboard.chukchi. This is how you get several different setups at once, like one for the Chukchi language and another for your default setup ✨
• -v, --verbose — makes setupcon extra chatty 🗣️ Use this if something goes wrong or if you're messing around with the config files 🙈
• -k, --keyboard-only — only sets up the keyboard. It won't touch the font or the terminal ⌨️ On Linux, you only need to do this once, bestie 💅
• -f, --font-only — only sets up the font. It won't touch the keyboard or the terminal 🔤 On Linux, you should repeat this every time a new console driver gets activated (like when the frame buffer turns on) 🖼️
• -t, --terminal-only — only sets up the terminal. It leaves the keyboard and the font alone 💻
• --current-tty — only sets up the current virtual terminal, and nothing else 🎯
• --force — skips the check for whether you're actually on the console 😬 > Careful!! If you run setupcon with this option while the screen is controlled by an X server, you could be forced to hard-reboot your computer. Not the vibe 💀
• --save — this one is super useful if you want to run setupcon early in the boot process, before /usr is mounted and the data it needs isn't around yet 🧚 It makes setupcon copy the required files into /etc/console-setup/ so they're available before /usr gets mounted. If you do run it early in boot, run it with this option after every change to your console config 🔁
• --save-only — same as --save, except it doesn't set up anything 🫧 Handy for saving the files while the screen is controlled by an X server 🌸
• --save-keyboard FILE — meant for initrd builders 🛠️ It doesn't configure anything. It just saves a usable keyboard layout into FILE 💜
• --setup-dir DIR — also for initrd builders, and again it doesn't configure anything 🫶 It arranges everything needed to configure the console inside the directory DIR. The file DIR/morefiles lists all the binaries the initrd builder has to install into the initrd image 📦 Every other file in DIR has to be copied into the initrd unchanged 🙌 To actually configure the console, you run the script DIR/bin/setupcon ✨
• -h, --help — shows usage info 🍓

🗂️ 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) 🌈

Okay bestie, that's the whole tea ☕💖 Console-setup, dated 2011-03-17, SETUPCON(1) on the console, all wrapped up with a bow 🎀💅 Go make your terminal look iconic 🧚✨