VCS(4) Linux Programmer's Manual VCS(4)NAME
vcs, vcsa - virtual console memory
DESCRIPTION
/dev/vcs0 is a character device with major number 7 and minor number 0,
usually of mode 0644 and owner root.tty. It refers to the memory of
the currently displayed virtual console terminal.
/dev/vcs[1-63] are character devices for virtual console terminals,
they have major number 7 and minor number 1 to 63, usually mode 0644
and owner root.tty. /dev/vcsa[0-63] are the same, but using unsigned
shorts (in host byte order) that include attributes, and prefixed with
four bytes giving the screen dimensions and cursor position: lines,
columns, x, y. (x = y = 0 at the top left corner of the screen.)
When a 512-character font is loaded, the 9th bit position can be
fetched by applying the ioctl(2) VT_GETHIFONTMASK operation (available
in Linux kernels 2.6.18 and above) on /dev/tty[1-63]; the value is
returned in the unsigned short pointed to by the third ioctl(2) argu‐
ment.
These devices replace the screendump ioctl(2) operations of console(4),
so the system administrator can control access using file system per‐
missions.
The devices for the first eight virtual consoles may be created by:
for x in 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8; do
mknod -m 644 /dev/vcs$x c 7 $x;
mknod -m 644 /dev/vcsa$x c 7 $[$x+128];
done
chown root:tty /dev/vcs*
No ioctl(2) requests are supported.
FILES
/dev/vcs[0-63]
/dev/vcsa[0-63]
VERSIONS
Introduced with version 1.1.92 of the Linux kernel.
EXAMPLE
You may do a screendump on vt3 by switching to vt1 and typing cat
/dev/vcs3 >foo. Note that the output does not contain newline charac‐
ters, so some processing may be required, like in fold -w 81 /dev/vcs3
| lpr or (horrors) setterm -dump 3 -file /proc/self/fd/1.
The /dev/vcsa0 device is used for Braille support.
This program displays the character and screen attributes under the
cursor of the second virtual console, then changes the background color
there:
#include <unistd.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <sys/ioctl.h>
#include <linux/vt.h>
int
main(void)
{
int fd;
char *device = "/dev/vcsa2";
char *console = "/dev/tty2";
struct {unsigned char lines, cols, x, y;} scrn;
unsigned short s;
unsigned short mask;
unsigned char ch, attrib;
fd = open(console, O_RDWR);
if (fd < 0) {
perror(console);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
if (ioctl(fd, VT_GETHIFONTMASK, &mask) < 0) {
perror("VT_GETHIFONTMASK");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
(void) close(fd);
fd = open(device, O_RDWR);
if (fd < 0) {
perror(device);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
(void) read(fd, &scrn, 4);
(void) lseek(fd, 4 + 2*(scrn.y*scrn.cols + scrn.x), 0);
(void) read(fd, &s, 2);
ch = s & 0xff;
if (attrib & mask)
ch |= 0x100;
attrib = ((s & ~mask) >> 8);
printf("ch='%c' attrib=0x%02x\n", ch, attrib);
attrib ^= 0x10;
(void) lseek(fd, -1, 1);
(void) write(fd, &attrib, 1);
exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
}
SEE ALSOconsole(4), tty(4), ttyS(4), gpm(8)COLOPHON
This page is part of release 3.27 of the Linux man-pages project. A
description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can
be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
Linux 2007-12-17 VCS(4)
