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Old 18th February 2012
daemonfowl daemonfowl is offline
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Default reversing the default Terminal color scheme .. is it possible ?

Hi !!
well this may seem somewhat trivial or minor issue .. but not to my eyes lol ..
So, is it possible to reverse the default white-on-black color scheme in OpenBSD Terminal ?

I am asking bacause when I installed NetBSD on my old ibook it had a very appeasing and eye-friendly -lol yaa- scheme which was : lightgreen on white bg ..


if only I can set this on OpenBSD .. whether for Acer Laptop or on the ibook itself ..
does it involve kernel building ? or just some Terminal resetting ?
Thank you so much !
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Old 19th February 2012
shep shep is offline
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The default OpenBSD terminal is an xterm. More information can be gleaned by reading the long man page
Code:
man xterm
.
You can play with options from the command line. If you find options you like they can be set permanently in .Xdefaults which resides in you home directory.
Purdue Engineering page on .Xdefaults

Last edited by shep; 19th February 2012 at 01:40 AM.
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Old 19th February 2012
daemonfowl daemonfowl is offline
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Hi Shep ! thanks for the link ..
what I mean is the starting screen .. instead of white on black .. the reverse would be kind to one's eyes when using terminal without X ..
It's macppc.NetBSD's choice ..
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Old 19th February 2012
shep shep is offline
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It looks like your NetBSD question is in the OpenBSD section. It may make a difference as to where you look for documentation.
I have not modified the console output other than the text display options. My understanding is that it emulates a VT100 terminal. There an extensive NetBSD guide with a section on the console drivers which I think addresses your question
http://www.netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-cons.html
If you are using OpenBSD
Code:
man wscons

Last edited by shep; 19th February 2012 at 02:26 AM.
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Old 19th February 2012
daemonfowl daemonfowl is offline
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Thanks Shep !
I'm considering the manual and the link .. as I'm using both Oses ..
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Old 19th February 2012
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On NetBSD check wscons section in GENERIC:
Code:
...
options 	WSDISPLAY_CUSTOM_OUTPUT	# color customization from wsconsctl(8)
#options 	WS_DEFAULT_FG=WSCOL_WHITE
#options 	WS_DEFAULT_BG=WSCOL_BLACK
...
options 	WS_KERNEL_FG=WSCOL_GREEN
#options 	WS_KERNEL_BG=WSCOL_BLACK
...
Some are explained in link provided by Shep under "Changing the color of kernel messages". I believe OpenBSD has some similar options to tune.
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Old 20th February 2012
daemonfowl daemonfowl is offline
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Thanks helpful fellow !! I'll try ..
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Old 20th February 2012
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When last I experimented with this (2007-8), the WS_DEFAULT_FG and _BG are source code options. You need to download the kernel source, and then set in the options in the SOURCE and then RECOMPILE the kernel and then reboot to that custom kernel.

We had a FIPS-compliant operation and we set the firewall and security hosts' _FG console color to a (very readable) light red font color. In this way in cases of admins with multiple remote login screens, the admins and their managers could easily distinguish at-a-glace the screens that were on (or left unattended on) production security hosts/appliances.

/S
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Old 20th February 2012
daemonfowl daemonfowl is offline
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Thanks for the points !
you mentioned one more reason why such a tweak is of value ..

(( for at least two reaons I must recompile the kernel : the color scheme and the OFB_ENABLE_CACHE option to quicken text scrolling .. I bet it is the same on both OpenBSD and NetBSD .. text scrolling sucks on both , when on apple hardware , with generic kernel ..))
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Old 20th February 2012
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Now this is odd. The link kindly pointed out by shep says you can change the console colours without recompiling the kernel by using the wsconsctl(8) utility (in NetBSD). But I tried it and it doesn't work on NetBSD.

First, doing
# wsconsctl -a
doesn't show any of the required variables to exist:
Code:
type=pc-xt
bell.pitch=700
bell.period=100
bell.volume=50
bell.pitch.default=1500
bell.period.default=100
bell.volume.default=50
repeat.del1=200
repeat.deln=50
repeat.del1.default=200
repeat.deln.default=50
ledstate=0
encoding=user.metaesc
keyclick=0
scroll.mode=0
scroll.modifier=1
Then, trying some commands anyway just gives error messages.
# wsconsctl -d -w border=blue
Code:
wsconsctl: WSDISPLAYIO_SBORDER: Inappropriate ioctl for device
# wsconsctl -d -w msg.default.bg=blue
Code:
wsconsctl: WSDISPLAYIO_GMSGATTRS: Operation not supported by device
This is on amd64 with GENERIC kernel, NetBSD 5.99.64. From the link:

Quote:
All of these details can be changed either from kernel options or through the wsconsctl(8) utility; the later may be preferable if you don't want to compile your own kernel, as the default options in GENERIC are suitable to get this tip working.
What am I missing?

[I apologize if it was inappropriate to post this in the OpenBSD part of the forum, but these features were being discussed for both OSs.]

Last edited by IdOp; 20th February 2012 at 10:57 PM.
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Old 20th February 2012
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Quote:
Now this is odd. The link kindly pointed out by shep says you can change the console colours without recompiling the kernel by using the wsconsctl(8) utility (in NetBSD)
As I said, it has been a few years [and versions past], but given the limited nature of the OpenBSD console video driver/frame buffer, I'm pretty sure in OpenBSD it is recompile and go scenario.

/S
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Old 20th February 2012
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Quote:
Originally Posted by s2scott View Post
As I said, it has been a few years [and versions past], but given the limited nature of the OpenBSD console video driver/frame buffer, I'm pretty sure in OpenBSD it is recompile and go scenario.
That sounds very reasonable to me too, but the problem I mentioned is happening on NetBSD. I see my post was not at all clear about that because of the fact I only said it directly near the very end. So I'll edit it now to put that information at the top. Sorry about the confusion!
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