showconsolefont

showconsolefont

showconsolefont is a utility from the kbd package that dumps the raw binary font data currently loaded into the Linux text console's EGA/VGA display adapter. This command is primarily useful for debugging console font issues, verifying the active font, or understanding the low-level structure of console fonts.

The output is typically a 4KB block representing 256 characters, with each character defined by a bitmap. It does not display a human-readable font name but rather the actual pixel data used to render characters on the console. It operates on the active virtual console.

The output of showconsolefont is raw binary font data, not a human-readable font name or a recognizable text string.

It is mainly relevant for traditional text-mode virtual consoles and has little utility in modern graphical environments (like X or Wayland).

If printed directly to the terminal without redirection or a suitable viewer (like od), the output will likely appear as garbled or unprintable characters.

The command typically outputs 4KB of data, corresponding to 256 characters. For a common 8x16 font, each character occupies 16 bytes (8 pixels wide, 16 rows high). This data represents the bitmap of each character's pixels.

To view the raw binary output in a more structured (e.g., octal or hexadecimal) format, it is often piped to utilities like od (octal dump):
showconsolefont | od -t x1c
This command will display the font data as a hexadecimal and character dump, making it somewhat readable for analysis.

showconsolefont is part of the kbd utilities package, which provides essential tools for managing the Linux console's keyboard and display aspects. These utilities have been fundamental since the early days of Linux to configure text-mode consoles before the widespread adoption of graphical desktop environments. Its function remains consistent with its original purpose of inspecting the active console font data.

setfont(8), console-tools(7), kbd(7)