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VBETOOL(1)                       User Commands                      VBETOOL(1)


NAME

       vbetool - run real-mode video BIOS code to alter hardware state


SYNOPSIS

       vbetool [[vbestate save|restore]|[vbemode set|get]|[vgamode]|[dpms
       on|off|standby|suspend|reduced]|[post [romfile]]|[vgastate
       on|off]|[vbefp panelid|panelsize|getbrightness|setbrightness|invert]]


DESCRIPTION

       vbetool uses lrmi in order to run code from the video BIOS. Currently,
       it is able to alter DPMS states, save/restore video card state and
       attempt to initialize the video card from scratch.


OPTIONS

       vbetool takes the following options:

       vbestate
              vbetool will use the VESA 0x4f0f extensions to save or restore
              hardware state. This will be sent to or read from stdin. This
              information is highly hardware specific - do not attempt to
              restore state saved from a different machine. This command will
              not work unless you are at a text console, as it interferes
              badly with X.

       dpms   vbetool will use the VESA 0x4f10 extensions to alter the power
              management state of your screen. "On", "off", "standby",
              "suspend" and "reduced" are acceptable further options and
              determine which state will be activated.

       vbemode
              vbetool will get or set the current VESA mode. "get" will return
              the current mode number on stdout - "set" will set the mode to
              the next argument.

       vgamode
              vbetool will set the legacy VGA mode to the following numeric
              argument.

       post   vbetool will attempt to run BIOS code located at c000:0003. This
              is the code run by the system BIOS at boot in order to intialise
              the video hardware. Note that on some machines (especially
              laptops), not all of this code is present after system boot - as
              a result, executing this command may result in undefined
              behaviour. This command must be run from a text console, as it
              will otherwise interfere with the operation of X. This command
              takes an optional argument which is the location of a file
              containing a ROM image. If provided, this image will be mapped
              to the c000 segment and used instead of the system's video BIOS.

       vgastate
              vbetool will enable or disable the current video card. On most
              hardware, disabling will cause the hardware to stop responding
              until it is reenabled. You probably don't want to do this if
              you're using a framebuffer.

       vbefp  vbetool will execute a VESA flat panel interface call.

              panelid will provide information about the panel

              panelsize will provide the size of the panel

              getbrightness will provide the current screen brightness as an
              integer

              setbrightness accepts an integer as an argument and will set the
              screen brightness to that

              invert will invert the colours of the screen


BUGS

       Switching dpms modes may interact badly with X on some systems.

       The vbestate command may behave in strange ways.

       The post command may result in the execution of arbitrary code that
       happens to be lying around in the area where chunks of your video BIOS
       used to be.

       The VESA specification does not require that "vbemode get" provides the
       correct mode if the current mode was set via some means other than the
       VESA BIOS extensions.

       The VESA flat panel interface ceased development at the proposal stage.
       panelid and panelsize will work on many machines, but the other
       arguments are unlikely to be implemented on available hardware.


AUTHOR

       vbetool was written by Matthew Garrett <mjg59@srcf.ucam.org>, based on
       code from read-edid by John Fremlin <john@fremlin.de>, LRMI
       (http://sourceforge.net/projects/lrmi/) and XFree
       (http://www.xfree86.org). It is released under the terms of the GNU
       General Public License.

vbetool 0.2                    31 December 2004                     VBETOOL(1)

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