# Console on system with two displays



## SchwarzerVossatka (May 29, 2016)

Hello, I have a machine with 2 displays. When X session is not yet started, one of the displays remains inactive while the other shows a console. I use FreeBSD 10.3 with UEFI loader and vt console driver. It is smart enough to autodetect the display's native resolution (a line from dmesg):


```
Copyright (c) 1992-2016 The FreeBSD Project.
Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994
        The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
FreeBSD is a registered trademark of The FreeBSD Foundation.
FreeBSD 10.3-RELEASE #3 b62280e(release/10.3.0): Sun May  1 16:14:47 MSK 2016
    root@vonbraun.home:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/MYKERNEL10.3 amd64
FreeBSD clang version 3.4.1 (tags/RELEASE_34/dot1-final 208032) 20140512
VT(efifb): resolution 1280x1024
```

So I'd like to change the active display to the other, as it has a bigger resolution. I cannot just change plugs because 1280x1024 display only has a VGA connector, and my video card has only one VGA port. Maybe it's possible to use both displays, showing two different virtual consoles on each display? Or if it isn't, is support for such multidisplay environments planned?

Cannot google it myself, I have only found articles for enabling both serial console and display. I am not sure if it will work for 2 displays.


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## tingo (May 29, 2016)

Can you change primary display / screen in your BIOS / UEFI setup?


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## SchwarzerVossatka (May 29, 2016)

tingo said:


> Can you change primary display / screen in your BIOS / UEFI setup?


Unfortunately, I cannot find this setting in UEFI. So FreeBSD cannot change it, do I understand you right?


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## Juanitou (May 29, 2016)

As far as I know vt(4) multihead depends on KMS driver support. In this sense, FreeBSD graphics support is moving quickly these days. You can follow the evolution of the update to DRM 4.6 and contribute as a tester here:
https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-x11/2016-May/

I do not think you can show two different consoles on each display but here with a ThinkPad laptop the initial console is cloned in a HDMI-attached monitor by loading the i915kms kernel module. I can even change the preferred mode, albeit the highest ones lead to crashes. You could test playing with /boot/loader.conf tunables, as described in the vt(4)  manual, e.g.:


```
kern.vt.fb.modes.HDMI-A-2="1920x1200"
```


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