vconsole.conf

systemd
Developer Lennart Poettering lennart@poettering.net
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 basic file format of the `vconsole.conf` is a newline-separated list of environment-like shell-compatible variable assignments. 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.

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.service 8. localectl 1 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

systemd 1, systemd-vconsole-setup.service 8, loadkeys 1, setfont 8, locale.conf 5, systemd-localed.service 8