# Increase terminal font with allscreens?



## sidetone (Oct 20, 2020)

How do I increase the terminal font _size_ by using the allscreens variable in rc.conf?

In my file, I have `allscreens_flags="green"` which sets the font to green. If this is put into /boot/loader.conf, will these settings occur sooner during boot up?


----------



## George (Oct 20, 2020)

Man vt(4)?

You can use kern.vt.color.X.rgb to edit the color of the console.
E.g. to make the text and background all black (silence it..), I once added

kern.vt.color.0.rgb=”25, 25, 25″
kern.vt.color.7.rgb=”25, 25, 25″
kern.vt.color.15.rgb=”25, 25, 25″
to /boot/loader.conf.


----------



## mickey (Oct 20, 2020)

sidetone said:


> How do I increase the terminal font _size_ by using the allscreens variable in rc.conf?


The _allscreens_flags_ variable is documented in rc.conf(5):

```
allscreens_flags
                 (str) If set, vidcontrol(1) is run with these options for
                 each of the virtual terminals (/dev/ttyv*).  For example, “-m
                 on” will enable the mouse pointer on all virtual terminals if
                 moused_enable is set to “YES”.
```
So you should be able to use any options documented in vidcontrol(1) including but not limited to:

```
-f [[size] file]
             Load font file for size (currently, only 8x8, 8x14 or 8x16).  The
             font file can be either uuencoded or in raw binary format.  You
             can also use the menu-driven vidfont(1) command to load the font
             of your choice.
```



sidetone said:


> In my file, I have `allscreens_flags="green"` which sets the font to green. If this is put into /boot/loader.conf, will these settings occur sooner during boot up?


I don't think they will work in loader.conf at all.


----------



## T-Daemon (Oct 21, 2020)

As a side note, for those searching for the right console font size, the following might be interresting: I had the problem with to small or to large console fonts in a FreeBSD VirtualBox image on a laptop, with no font size I liked available for vt(4) in the default system installation.

The FreeBSD/Newcons wiki article describes in the "Font Support" paragraph how to convert fonts suitable for the vt(4) terminal. In the article the terminus font was used as example, based on that font I have converted it into a font size I felt comfortable with for the laptop, placed it in /usr/share/vt/fonts, set in /etc/rc.conf: `allscreens_flags="-f Terminus-10x20"`.

Screenshot of the VM's console with the Terminus font:



There are some .fnt fonts in ports/x11-fonts, but any font in .fnt format or converted into from BDF and HEX format should work as vt(4) console font.

Here are two other fonts I tested, but for my taste they don't have a font size I liked, also they look indeed fancy but they are not so clean as the terminus font.

x11-fonts/spleen:


x11-fonts/profont:


----------

