vconsole.conf
systemd
vconsole.conf
5
vconsole.conf
Configuration file for the virtual console
/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-release5 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.
/etc/vconsole.conf is usually created and updated
using
systemd-localed.service8.
localectl1
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. 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=.
vconsole.font=
vconsole.font_map=
vconsole.font_unimap=
Overrides FONT=, FONT_MAP=, and
FONT_UNIMAP=.
Example
German keyboard and console
/etc/vconsole.conf:
KEYMAP=de-latin1
FONT=eurlatgr
See Also
systemd1,
systemd-vconsole-setup.service8,
loadkeys1,
setfont8,
locale.conf5,
systemd-localed.service8