Linux console

Not to be confused with theLinux Console operating system.[1]

The Linux console is a system console internal to the Linux kernel (a system
console is the device which receives all kernel messages and warnings and which
allows logins in single user mode).[2] The Linux console provides a way for the
kernel and other processes to send text output to the user, and to receive text input
from the user. The user typically enters text with a computer keyboard and reads the
output text on a computer monitor. The Linux kernel supports virtual consoles - Simplified Structure of the Linux
consoles that are logically separate, but which access the same physical keyboard Kernel: VT subsystem.
and display.[3] The Linux console (and Linux virtual consoles) are implemented by
the VT subsystem of the Linux kernel, and do not rely on any user space software.[4]
This is in contrast to aterminal emulator, which is a user space process that emulates
a terminal, and is typically used in a graphical display environment.

The Linux console was one of the first features of the kernel and was originally
written by Linus Torvalds in 1991[5] (see history of Linux). There are two main
implementations: framebuffer and text mode. The framebuffer implementation is the
default in modern Linux distributions, and together with kernel mode setting,
provides kernel-level support for display hardware and features such as showing
graphics while the system is booting.[6] The legacy text mode implementation was Framebuffer console showing
used in PC-compatible systems with CGA, EGA, MDA and VGA graphics cards. Knoppix booting. The presence of
Non-x86 architectures used framebuffer mode because their graphics cards did not the penguin graphic indicates this is
a framebuffer console as opposed to
implement text mode.[6] The Linux console uses fixed-size bitmap, monospace
text mode console.
.[6]
fonts, usually defaulting to 8x16 pixels per character

The Linux console is an optional kernel feature, and most embedded Linux systems
do not enable it. These systems typically provide an alternative user interface (e.g. web based), or boot immediately into a graphical
user interface and use this as the primary means of interacting with the user. Other implementations of the Linux console include the
Braille console to support refreshable Braille displays.[7] and the serial port console.[8]

Contents
Purpose
Virtual consoles
Text mode console
Font, character set and keyboard layout
Text modes
Comparison to Windows and DOS
Linux framebuffer console
Linux serial port console
Control characters
Future plans
List of /dev/ entries related to the console
References
Purpose
The Linux console provides a way for the kernel and other processes to output text-based messages to the user, and to receive text-
based input from the user. In Linux, several devices can be used as system console: a [9] virtual terminal,[10] serial port,[11] USB
serial port,[12] VGA in text-mode,[13] framebuffer. Some modern Linux-based systems have deprecated kernel based text-mode input
and output, and instead show a graphical logo or progress bar while the system is booting, followed by the immediate start of a
graphical user interface (e.g. theX.Org Server on desktop distributions, or SurfaceFlinger on Android).

During kernel boot, the console is commonly used to display the boot log of the kernel. The boot log includes information about
detected hardware, and updates on the status of the boot procedure. At this point in time, the kernel is the only software running, and
hence logging via user-space (e.g. syslog) is not possible, so the console provides a convenient place to output this information. Once
the kernel has finished booting, it runs the init process (also sending output to the console), which handles booting of the rest of the
system including starting any backgrounddaemons.

After the init boot process is complete, the console will be used to multiplex multiple virtual terminals (accessible by pressing Ctrl-
Alt-F1, Ctrl-Alt-F2 etc., Ctrl-Alt-LeftArrow, Ctrl-Alt-RightArrow, or using chvt[14] ). On each virtual terminal, a getty process is run,
which in turn runs /bin/login to authenticate a user. After authentication, a command shell will be run. Virtual terminals, like the
console, are supported at the Linux kernel level.[15]

The Linux console implements aterminal type of "linux" and the escape sequences it uses are in theconsole_codes man page.[16]

Virtual consoles
Virtual consoles allow the storage of multiple text buffers, enabling different console programs to run simultaneously but interact
with the user in different contexts. From the user'spoint of view, this creates the illusion of several independent consoles.

Each virtual console can have its own character set and keyboard layout. Linux 2.6 introduced the ability to load a different font for
each virtual console (kernel versions predating 2.6 change the font only on demand).

Text mode console

The text mode implementation is used on PC-based systems with a legacy CGA/EGA/MDA/VGA video card that implements text-
based video modes. In text mode, the kernel sends a 2D array of characters to the video card, and the video card converts the
characters to pixels for display.

Font, character set and keyboard layout

The text buffer is a part of VGA memory which describes the content of a text screen in terms of code points and character attributes.
Code points in the text buffer and font are generally not the same as encoding used in text terminal semantics to put characters on the
screen. The set of glyphs on the screen is determined by the current font. The text screen is handled by console.c and
consolemap.c drivers. There is a utility for altering fonts and terminal encodings calledconsolechars.

The Linux kernel (keyboard.c driver) has almost complete support for keyboard input (keyboard layouts), but it remains a bit
inconsistent because it interacts badly with different character sets. Layouts are loaded by theloadkeys utility.

These two utilities and corresponding data files are packed in Linux Console Tools http://lct.sourceforge.net/ shipped with many
Linux distributions.

Efforts on the internationalization of Linux at the kernel level started as early as in 1994 byMarkus Kuhn and Andries Brouwer.
Text modes
The Linux console is capable of supporting any VGA-style text mode, but the kernel itself has very limited means to set these modes
up. SVGATextMode helps to enable more complex text modes than the standard EGA and VGA modes. It is fully compatible with
Console Tools, but has some conflicts withdosemu, SVGAlib and display servers.

Currently, there is no support for different modes on different virtual consoles.

Comparison to Windows and DOS

Microsoft Windows (of any version) does not have a fully functional support of the console. The comparable feature there, but for
application software only, is the Win32 console.

Feature Linux Windows DOS

VGA text attributes Yes Yes Yes
Custom fonts Possible Possible Possible
223 or 256 characters (depends on access
512 glyphs max. (on VGA text),
Character set method),
any code page or UTF-8
any code page, or Unicode[n 1]

Run-time character set switching Possible[n 2] Impossible[n 1] Depends on PoV

Yes, ANSI-compatible Yes, ANSI

Terminal emulation No
(TERM=linux) (with ANSI.SYS)

Run-time switching between text Technically possible, but usually No way to get
Application dependent
mode and GUI impractical[n 3] back to GUI

Run-time changing numbers of

Possible Possible Application dependent
rows and columns
Limited
Switching between applications Possible Possible (some TSRs may be
activated)
Non-standard modes Possible Impossible Possible
Application System and application
Mouse support Yes (with gpm or similar)
dependent dependent

1. a b Unicode supported sinceWindows NT based systems, which allow to switch code pages and use Unicode, but
only in window mode. Also, NT systems use own text buf
fer format incompatible with VGA, which produces an
overhead in hardware text modes. No Unicode support in non-NT versions of Windows
2. a As non-ASCII keyboard layout should be reloaded because of flawed implementation.
3. a Kernel mode settings in recent kernels make this more practical for some video hardware.

Linux framebuffer console

The Linux framebuffer (fbdev) is a graphic hardware-independent abstraction layer, which was originally implemented to allow the
Linux kernel to emulate a text console on systems such as the Apple Macintosh that do not have a text-mode display. Now it offers a
kernel space text mode emulation on any platform. Its advantage over (currently unmaintained) SVGATextMode is a reliance and
better hardware compatibility. It also permits to overpass alltechnical restrictions of VGA text modes.

A Linux framebuffer console differs from a VGA one only in ways of drawing characters. The processing of keyboard events and
virtual consoles’ support are exactly the same.

Linux serial port console

Linux serial console is a console implementation via serial port, enabled by option CONFIG_SERIAL_CONSOLE in the kernel
configuration. It may be used in some embedded systems, and on servers, where a direct interaction with operator is not expected.
The serial console allows the same mode of access for the system, but usually at a slower speed due to the small bandwidth of RS-
232. A serial console is often used during development of software for embedded systems, and is sometimes left accessible via a
debug port.

Control characters
The console responds to a number ofcontrol characters.[17]

Control character ASCII name Description

^G BEL Bell sound
^H BS Backspace
^I HT Horizontal tab
^J LF Line feed
^K VT Vertical tab
^L FF Form feed
^M CR Carriage return
^N SO Shift out
^O SI Shift in
^X CAN Cancel escape sequence
^Z SUB Cancel escape sequence
^[ ESC Escape / begin escape sequence
^? DEL Nothing
ALT-^[ n/a Start command sequence

Control sequence Description

^[M Reverse line feed
^[D Line feed
^[E Carriage return and line feed
^[H Set tab stop
^[7 Store cursor
^[8 Restore cursor
^[> Switch keypad to numeric mode
^[= Switch keypad to application mode
^[c Reset terminal settings
^[Z Print terminal ID

For ^[ press the Escape key.

The console also supports extended escape sequences, ANSI CSI Mode sequences, and DEC Private Mode sequences.[16][17] These
extended sequences can control colors, visual effects like blinking, underline, intensity and inverse video, bell tone frequency and
duration, VESA screen blanking interval. Aside from the textual blanking, there is no known way to place the VGA adapter into
standby.
Future plans
The Kmscon projects aims to create a modern user-space replacement for the Linux console.[18][19] Development priorities include
support for multi-monitor setups, Unicode font rendering with Pango, XKB keyboard handling, and GPU OpenGL acceleration.[20]
Complaints about the current kernel implementation include "that it's a user-interface in kernel-space, the code is poorly maintained,
handles keyboards badly, produces bad font rendering, misses out on mode-setting and multi-head support, contains no multi-seat
awareness, and only has limited hot-plugging handling, limited toVT102 compliance."[4]

List of /dev/ entries related to the console

Name Major Minor Description
/dev/tty1 1
virtual consoles
… c 4 …
(keyboard controlled)
/dev/tty63 63
Virtual Console Screen
/dev/vcs c 7 0
/dev/vcs is the contents of the current virtual screen.
/dev/vcs1 1
… c 7 … The text (the character pointer table) of a virtual screen.
/dev/vcs63 63
/dev/vcsa1 129 Virtual Console Screen with Attributes
… c 7 … Full image of a virtual text buffer; first 4 bytes contain numbers of rows, columns and
/dev/vcsa63 191 cursor position
/dev/ttyS0 64
c 4 Serial ports, suitable for system console
… …
/dev/tty0 c 4 0 “current console”

References
1. "Linux Console OS" (https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=linuxconsole)
. DistroWatch. Retrieved 21 June
2017.
2. "config VT_CONSOLE: Support for console on virtual terminal"(https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linu
x.git/tree/drivers/tty/Kconfig?id=HEAD). Linus Torvalds. "The system console is the device which receives all kernel
messages and warnings and which allows logins in single user mode. "
3. "config VT: Virtual terminal" (https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/tty/Kconfig?id=HEA
D). Linus Torvalds. "If you say Y here, you will get support for terminal devices with display and keyboard devices.
These are called "virtual" because you can run several virtual terminals (also called virtual consoles) on one physical
terminal. This is rather useful, for example one virtual terminal can collect system messages and warnings, another
one can be used for a text-mode user session, and a third could run an X session, all in parallel. Switching between
virtual terminals is done with certain key combinations, usually Alt-<function key>. "
4. David Herrmann (2012-08-12)."Deprecating CONFIG_VT"(http://dvdhrm.wordpress.com/2012/08/12/killing-of
f-confi
g_vt/).
5. "Replacing CONFIG_VT/Linux-Console"(https://fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/kmscon/) . FOSDEM. 2013-02-02.
"CONFIG_VT is the kernel configuration option that enables virtual terminals in the kernel. Initially written by Linus
himself, it has been around since 1991."
6. "The Framebuffer Console" (https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/fb/fbcon.txt). kernel.org. "The framebuffer
console (fbcon), as its name implies, is a text console running on top of the framebuf fer device. It has the
functionality of any standard text console driver , such as the VGA console, with the added features that can be
attributed to the graphical nature of the framebuf fer. In the x86 architecture, the framebuffer console is optional, and
some even treat it as a toy. For other architectures, it is the only available display device, text or graphical. What are
the features of fbcon? The framebuffer console supports high resolutions, varying font types, display rotation,
primitive multihead, etc. Theoretically, multi-colored fonts, blending, aliasing, and any feature made available by the
underlying graphics card are also possible."
 7. "Documentation/braille-console.txt"(https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/braille-console.txt). kernel.org.
8. "Documentation/serial-console.txt"(https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/serial-console.txt). kernel.org.
9. "CONFIG_VT_CONSOLE: Support for console on virtual terminal"(http://cateee.net/lkddb/web-lkddb/VT_CONSOL
E.html). "The system console is the device which receives all kernel messages and warnings and which allows
logins in single user mode. If you answer Y here, a virtual terminal (the device used to interact with a physical
terminal) can be used as system console."
10. "CONFIG_SERIAL_CONSOLE: Support for console on serial port"(http://cateee.net/lkddb/web-lkddb/SERIAL_CON
SOLE.html). "If you say Y here, it will be possible to use a serial port as the system console (the system console is
the device which receives all kernel messages and warnings and which allows logins in single user mode). This
could be useful if some terminal or printer is connected to that serial port.
"
11. "CONFIG_USB_SERIAL_CONSOLE: USB Serial Console device support" (http://cateee.net/lkddb/web-lkddb/USB_
SERIAL_CONSOLE.html). "If you say Y here, it will be possible to use a USB to serial converter port as the system
console (the system console is the device which receives all kernel messages and warnings and which allows logins
in single user mode). This could be useful if some terminal or printer is connected to that serial port.
"
12. "CONFIG_VGA_CONSOLE: VGA text console"(http://cateee.net/lkddb/web-lkddb/VGA_CONSOLE.html) . "Saying Y
here will allow you to use Linux in text mode through a display that complies with the generic VGA standard.irtually
V
everyone wants that."
13. "CONFIG_FRAMEBUFFER_CONSOLE: Framebuf
fer Console support" (http://cateee.net/lkddb/web-lkddb/FRAMEB
UFFER_CONSOLE.html).
14. "chvt(1) - Linux man page: chvt - change foreground virtual terminal"(http://linux.die.net/man/1/chvt).
15. "console(4) - Linux man page: console - console terminal and virtual consoles"
(http://linux.die.net/man/4/console).
"A Linux system has up to 63 virtual consoles"
16. "console_codes(4) - Linux man page: console_codes - Linux console escape and control sequences"
(http://linux.di
e.net/man/4/console_codes).
17. Michael K. Johnson and Erik W. Troan. Linux Application Development - The Linux Console
(http://www.ladweb.net/). ASCII books. ISBN 0321563220.
18. David Herrmann (2012-08-11)."KMSCON: Linux KMS/DRM based Virtual Console" (http://dvdhrm.wordpress.com/2
012/08/11/kmscon-linux-kmsdrm-based-virtual-console/)
.
19. Michael Larabel (2013-03-28). "KMSCON: A DRM-Based Terminal Emulator" (https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?p
age=news_item&px=MTA3ODE). Phoronix. "Announced yesterday was the release of kmscon, a terminal emulator
for Linux that's similar to what's offered inside the kernel, but instead it's in user-space and relies upon the kernel's
DRM interfaces as well as Mesa."
20. Michael Larabel (2013-02-08). "The Linux Kernel Console Is Being Killed Of
f" (https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?p
age=news_item&px=MTI5Njc). Phoronix. "CONFIG_VT has been part of the Linux kernel going back to the early
90's but hasn't really advanced much in that time. David Herrmann, a developer that got going on this new initiative
as a student part of Google Summer of Code, wants a new solution that's built with multi-seat and multiple monitors
in mind, incorporates Unicode font rendering, XKB-like keyboard handling, graphics hardware acceleration, VT220-
VT510 compatibility, and other features."

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