Linux – How to configure setfont and loadkeys properly

consolefontskeyboard-layoutlinuxlocale

I'm installing LFS and I'm struggling with this section. My locale is sv_SE.UTF-8 and I have a Swedish keyboard. So I suppose I should enable unicode and that the keymap is sv-latin1:

cat > /etc/sysconfig/console << "EOF"
# Begin /etc/sysconfig/console

UNICODE="1"
KEYMAP="sv-latin1"

# End /etc/sysconfig/console
EOF

Correct? What I'm struggling with is how to set the font. The book has this example for configuring the German keymap:

cat > /etc/sysconfig/console << "EOF"
# Begin /etc/sysconfig/console

KEYMAP="de-latin1"
KEYMAP_CORRECTIONS="euro2"
FONT="lat0-16 -m 8859-15"

# End /etc/sysconfig/console
EOF

Since German and Swedish is somewhat similar I suppose I could possibly use the same font, but I don't really understand the difference between lat0-16, lat1-16 and lat2-16. Also how do I know if I'm supposed to use 8859-15 or 8859-1?

In UTF-8 mode, the kernel uses the application character map for conversion of composed 8-bit key codes in the keymap to UTF-8, and thus the argument of the "-m" parameter should be set to the encoding of the composed key codes in the keymap.

So I guess the -m parameter is dependent on the chosen keymap, but how do I know what application character map my keymap uses?

Finally I also have a question about the font naming: The latin (I suppose that's what lat stands for) fonts have names on the following form: latX-Y

Is it correct that X specifies what characters are supported and Y specifies the font size?

Best Answer

The latin1 stands for Western European languages - i.e. German. latin2 is for Central European - i.e. Poland, Czech Republic and others. The lat1-16 stands for Latin 1 (8859-1), font size 16 points. lat2-16 stands for Latin 2 (the same with iso 8859-2) with height 16 points (pixels).

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Linux – How to list console and kernel fonts

NOTE: Some point of this is not completly stated at LSB. This answer was build on a Debian Squeeze (Debian 6.0.6). Some filepath and filenames may change on other distrib. Editing this answer to help me locate configs file will be welcome!

To answer as your points:

1. How do I list them

(cd /usr/share/consolefonts && find . -type f -name '*.psf.gz'; ) |
    sed 's/.\/\(.*\).psf.gz/\1/' |
    sort |
    column

For InKernel compiled fonts, things are differents. On Debian, running kernel have a copy of his configuration file in /boot:

grep '^CONFIG_FONT' /boot/config-2.6.32-5-amd64 
CONFIG_FONT_8x8=y
CONFIG_FONT_8x16=y

2. How can I change the console fonts?

Depending on if you want changes to be permanent:

For immediates changes (non permanents):

setfont -f Lat15-VGA28x16

For permanents changes, have a look at

zless /usr/share/doc/console-setup/README.Debian

vi /etc/default/console-setup

3. should I use /usr/local/lib/consolefonts/?

In fact, yes. You could simply (as root) create a group consolefont, add member to this group and change group's owner of the directory:

addgroup --system consolefont
chown root:consolefont /usr/local/lib/consolefonts
chmod 775 /usr/local/lib/consolefonts
adduser toto consolefont

Linux – Loadkeys gives permission denied for normal user

You need root capabilities to use loadkeys. It is common to set the setuid permission bit on loadkeys. Setting this bit will cause any processes spawned by executing the loadkeys file to run as the owner of the file (usually root).

For added security, you should change loadkeys's permissions to 750, make a group for it, and add any users that need to use loadkeys to that group.

$ groupadd loadkeys             # you can use any group name 
$ chgrp loadkeys /bin/loadkeys
$ chmod 4750 /bin/loadkeys      # setuid, group- and user-only read and execution
$ gpasswd -a user loadkeys      # add user to the group

Best Answer

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Linux – How to list console and kernel fonts

Linux – Loadkeys gives permission denied for normal user

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