WSCONS(4) BSD Kernel Interfaces Manual WSCONS(4)NAMEwscons — workstation console access
SYNOPSIS
options WSEMUL_SUN
options WSEMUL_VT100
options WSEMUL_NO_DUMB
options WSEMUL_DEFAULT="xxx"
options WS_DEFAULT_FG=WSCOL_XXX
options WS_DEFAULT_BG=WSCOL_XXX
options WS_DEFAULT_COLATTR="(WSATTR_XXX | WSATTR_YYY)"
options WS_DEFAULT_MONOATTR="(WSATTR_XXX | WSATTR_YYY)"
options WS_KERNEL_FG=WSCOL_XXX
options WS_KERNEL_BG=WSCOL_XXX
options WS_KERNEL_COLATTR="(WSATTR_XXX | WSATTR_YYY)"
options WS_KERNEL_MONOATTR="(WSATTR_XXX | WSATTR_YYY)"
options WSCOMPAT_USL_SYNCTIMEOUT=nnn
options WSDISPLAY_COMPAT_PCVT
options WSDISPLAY_COMPAT_SYSCONS
options WSDISPLAY_COMPAT_USL
options WSDISPLAY_COMPAT_RAWKBD
options WSKBD_EVENT_AUTOREPEAT
options WSKBD_USONLY
wsdisplay* at ...
wskbd* at ... mux N
wsmouse* at ... mux N
pseudo-device wsmux N
DESCRIPTION
The wscons driver provides support for machine independent access to the
console.
wscons is made of a number of cooperating modules, in particular
· hardware support for display adapters, keyboards and mice, see
wsdisplay(4), wskbd(4), and wsmouse(4)
· input event multiplexor, see wsmux(4)
· terminal emulation modules (see below), and
· compatibility options to support control operations and other low-
level behaviour of existing terminal drivers (see below)
Terminal emulations
wscons does not define its own set of terminal control sequences and spe‐
cial keyboard codes in terms of termcap(5). Instead a “terminal
emulation” is assigned to each virtual screen when the screen is created.
(See wsconscfg(8).) Different terminal emulations can be active at the
same time on one display. The following choices are available:
dumb This minimal terminal support is available unless the kernel
option options WSEMUL_NO_DUMB was specified at build time. No
control sequences are supported besides the ASCII control charac‐
ters. The cursor is not addressable. Only ASCII keyboard codes
will be delivered, cursor and functions keys do not work.
sun The “sun” console emulation is available if options WSEMUL_SUN
was specified at kernel build time. It supports the control
sequences of SUN machine consoles and delivers its keyboard codes
for function and keypad keys in use. This emulation is suffi‐
cient for full-screen applications.
vt100 is available with the kernel compile option options WSEMUL_VT100.
It provides the most commonly used functions of DEC VT100 termi‐
nals with some extensions introduced by the DEC VT220 and DEC
VT320 models. The features of the original VT100 which are not
or not completely implemented are:
· VT52 support, 132-column-mode, smooth scroll, light back‐
ground, keyboard autorepeat control, external printer sup‐
port, keyboard locking, newline/linefeed switching: Escape
sequences related to these features are ignored or answered
with standard replies. (DECANM, DECCOLM, DECSCLM, DECSCNM,
DECARM, DECPFF, DECPEX, KAM, LNM)
· Function keys are not reprogrammable and fonts can not be
downloaded. DECUDK and DECDLD sequences will be ignored.
· Neither C1 control set characters will be recognized nor will
8-bit keyboard codes be delivered.
· The “DEC supplemental graphic” font is approximated by the
ISO-latin-1 font, though there are subtle differences.
· The actual rendering quality depends on the underlying graph‐
ics hardware driver. Characters might be missing in the
available fonts and be substituted by more or less fitting
replacements.
Depending on the keyboard used, not all function keys might
be available.
In addition to the plain VT100 functions are supported:
· ANSI colors.
· Some VT220 -like presentation state settings and -reports
(DECRSPS), especially tabulator settings.
In most applications, wscons will work sufficiently as a VT220
emulator.
The WSEMUL_DEFAULT kernel option is used to select one of the described
terminal options as the default choice. The default takes effect at ker‐
nel startup, i.e. for the operating system console or additional screens
allocated through the WSDISPLAY_DEFAULTSCREENS option (see wsdisplay(4)),
or if no emulation type was passed to the wsconscfg(8) utility.
Compatibility options
these options allow X servers and other programs using low-level console
driver functions usually written specifically for other console drivers
to run on NetBSD systems. The options are in particular:
WSDISPLAY_COMPAT_USL
Support the protocol for switches between multiple virtual
screens on one display as used by most PC-UNIX variants. This
is used by the NetBSD wsconscfg(8) utility.
WSDISPLAY_COMPAT_RAWKBD
Allows to get raw XT keyboard scancodes from PC keyboards as
needed by i386 X servers.
WSDISPLAY_COMPAT_PCVT
Emulates enough of the NetBSD/i386 “pcvt” driver to make X
servers work.
WSDISPLAY_COMPAT_SYSCONS
Emulates enough of the FreeBSD “syscons” driver to make X
servers work. Useful with FreeBSD binary emulation.
Linux/i386 X servers usually run successfully if the first two options
are enabled together with the NetBSD Linux binary emulation.
(To have programs looking for device special files of other console driv‐
ers find the wscons driver entry points, symlinks are a helpful measure.)
Other options
options WS_DEFAULT_FG=WSCOL_XXX,
options WS_DEFAULT_BG=WSCOL_XXX,
options WS_DEFAULT_COLATTR="(WSATTR_XXX | WSATTR_YYY)"
and
options WS_DEFAULT_MONOATTR="(WSATTR_XXX | WSATTR_YYY)"
allow to make default console output appear in specific colors
and attributes. “WS_DEFAULT_FG” and “WS_DEFAULT_BG” set the
foreground / background used on color displays. The
“WSCOL_XXX” arguments are colors as defined in
src/sys/dev/wscons/wsdisplayvar.h. “WS_DEFAULT_COLATTR” and
“WS_DEFAULT_MONOATTR” are additional attribute flags used on
color or monochrome displays, respectively. The arguments are
defined in the same header file. Whether the attributes are
supported or not depends on the actually used graphics adapter.
These options are ignored by the “dumb” terminal emulation.
options WS_KERNEL_FG=WSCOL_XXX,
options WS_KERNEL_BG=WSCOL_XXX,
options WS_KERNEL_COLATTR="(WSATTR_XXX | WSATTR_YYY)"
and
options WS_KERNEL_MONOATTR="(WSATTR_XXX | WSATTR_YYY)"
allow to make console output originating from the kernel appear
differently than output from user level programs (via
/dev/console or the specific tty device like /dev/ttyE0).
Their meaning is the same as their ‘WS_DEFAULT_*’ counterparts.
options WSCOMPAT_USL_SYNCTIMEOUT=nnn
The virtual screen switching protocol enabled by
“WSDISPLAY_COMPAT_USL” uses a somewhat complex handshake proto‐
col to pass control to user programs such as X servers control‐
ling a virtual screen. In order to prevent a non-responsive
application from locking the whole console system, a screen
switch will be rolled back after a 5 second timeout if the
application does not respond. This option can be used to spec‐
ify in seconds a different timeout value.
options WSKBD_EVENT_AUTOREPEAT
If set, this option enables auto repeat even in event mode.
The auto repeat will generate key down events while the key is
pressed.
options WSKBD_USONLY
In order to strip down the space usage of wscons, all keymaps
except the US english one can be removed from the kernel with
this option, which results in a space gain of about 10kB.
SEE ALSOwsdisplay(4), wskbd(4), wsmouse(4), wsmux(4), wsconscfg(8), wsconsctl(8),
wsfontload(8), wscons(9)BSD June 5, 2012 BSD
