Re: Setting the TTY VT font globally

Winston <wbe@ubeblock.psr.com.invalid> wrote:

Anton Shepelev <anton.txt@gmail.moc> writes:

FreeBSD 14.1 RELEASE here.
>
The virtual TTYs (Ctrl+Alt+F1..F8) are provided through VT(4),
the man page to which mentions only one tool for setting
up the font -- vidcontrol(1), which affects only the TTY on which
the program is invoked.

>
Actually, I think it operates on stdin, which you can specify.

Thanks, I didn't realise that:  the man page does not say so
explicitly[*], but provides examles with `< /dev/ttyv<n>', which,
however, make no changes, but dump the contents of a terminal to
stdout or an .scr file.  How can a redirection of STDIN affect which
TTY takes the new settings?  I see it does, but am a loss as to
how... There only one mentinon of standard input in the man page,
and that in the context of the -p option.

* It is my long-standing conviction that documenation shall state
  explicitly whatever it has to state, and use examples only
  to /illustarte/ directly expressed information. VIDCONTROL(8)
  seems to fall short of this.

How, then, can I set up the font I need (e.g. terminus-b32.fnt),
  a) as early in the boot process as possble, and
  b) for all TTYs, 1 to 8 ?

>
The following, done as root, perhaps in /etc/rc.local, might work:
>
vidcontrol -f terminus-b32 </dev/ttyv1
vidcontrol -f terminus-b32 </dev/ttyv2
vidcontrol -f terminus-b32 </dev/ttyv3
vidcontrol -f terminus-b32 </dev/ttyv4
vidcontrol -f terminus-b32 </dev/ttyv5
vidcontrol -f terminus-b32 </dev/ttyv6
vidcontrol -f terminus-b32 </dev/ttyv7
vidcontrol -f terminus-b32 </dev/ttyv8
>
(or use a shell loop).

Indeed, thank you.

There may well be a more elegant solution, such as some kern.vt.*
variable one can set, but I don't know it.

VT(4) does not mention a suitable variable.