FreeBSD's new console project is almost ready for primetime

by
in linux on (#3PG)
story imageFor a server OS, FreeBSD has certainly had what I'll affectionately call a "lousy" console for a long time. In fact, it was my first disappointment the first time I installed FreeBSD on a server. Fortunately, I'm not the only one who felt that way.

Phoronix now reports The FreeBSD "Newcons" effort to provide a new VT console driver continues making progress for its more proper debut in the next major FreeBSD release. The new code includes full Unicode support including wide characters (Chinese, Japanese), kernel mode setting, better font maps, and support for more graphical modes to provide prettier consoles during boot time etc. It is expected to be included in the next major release.

The FreeBSD wiki Newcons page has the details.

Good ... but how important? (Score: 1)

by fnj@pipedot.org on 2014-06-26 13:17 (#29B)

First, let's be clear that I think it is dandy to address this shortcoming.

Having said that, and the tiny sprinkling of FreeBSD workstations aside, who uses the local text-mode console in a FreeBSD server for anything aside from dealing with hardware failure and dealing with a boot process which has gone awry?

All my text mode interaction with FreeBSD servers is through ssh, whether from a text mode terminal (very occasionally) or using an X terminal (most of the time). Does this change have any effect on that at all? Because it appears to work fine as is.

[2][root@fnjomega ~/unitest]# locale
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=
[2][root@fnjomega ~]# mkdir unitest
[2][root@fnjomega ~]# cd unitest
[2][root@fnjomega ~/unitest]# touch ͲͻΉΏπξηθ
[2][root@fnjomega ~/unitest]# cat > ЉЏГЯШ
now is the time
[2][root@fnjomega ~/unitest]# ls -l
total 4
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 0 Jun 26 09:07 ??ΉΏπξηθ
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 16 Jun 26 09:08 ЉЏГЯШ
[2][root@fnjomega ~/unitest]# cat ЉЏГЯШ
now is the time
[2][root@fnjomega ~]# rm ͲͻΉΏπξηθ
[2][root@fnjomega ~/unitest]#

I'm guessing the "??" in the Greek string above is a font shortcoming rather than a basic problem using unicode in bash on FreeBSD.
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