# Speedup the movement of pointer in console (with arrows)



## blind0ne (Sep 17, 2021)

Hello, I enjoy using freebsd, but recently I tried another linux based system, where the moving the screen printing pointer with arrows on keyboard was much fater then I exeperience it in freeBSD, I would like to ask, how can I cahnge the speed of this process. (I mean this '|' poninter that is pointing on the place in current string where pressed char from the keywbord will appear after keyboard touch ). 

Thank you very much.


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## zirias@ (Sep 17, 2021)

Guess we have a new generation .... this thing is called a (text) cursor 

I assume you're talking about the text console (no X) and about the "speed" when keeping the arrow keys (well, actually "cursor keys") pressed? This should be related to the key repeat rate. For that, look up `keyrate` in rc.conf(5).


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## blind0ne (Sep 17, 2021)

Zirias said:


> Guess we have a new generation .... this thing is called a (text) cursor
> 
> I assume you're talking about the text console (no X) and about the "speed" when keeping the arrow keys (well, actually "cursor keys") pressed? This should be related to the key repeat rate. For that, look up `keyrate` in rc.conf(5).


Thnx, I've wrote down keyrate="fast" and it seems to work, I guess. But I would like to know how to change this speed in some kind of measurement units, Also I would like to dive more deeply and edit some kind of such parameters somewhere, If it's possible to trace somehow. Thanks a lot.


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## zirias@ (Sep 17, 2021)

blind0ne said:


> But I would like to know how to change this speed in some kind of measurement units,


For that, look up the flag `-r` of kbdcontrol(1). `keyrate` in /etc/rc.conf accepts the same values (in fact it just makes an init script call kbdcontrol). One of the very rare cases that some FreeBSD manpage is slightly incomplete  



blind0ne said:


> Also I would like to dive more deeply and edit some kind of such parameters somewhere, If it's possible to trace somehow.


Just as an example, I found the relevant init-script with `grep keyrate /etc/rc.d/*` (it's /etc/rc.d/syscons). Looking inside that script, I learned it just calls kbdcontrol(1).


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