etcwsconsctl.conf

/etc/wsconsctl.conf

This file contains configuration instructions for the machine-independent wsconsctl(8) console management program. Use this system to configure the keyboard-and-mouse console attached to your computer. Entries in /etc/wsconsctl.conf are simple variable assignments. While the default wsconsctl.conf file contains several examples, here are some of the more commonly used choices.

Change Keyboard Encoding

The default keyboard is the U.S. standard. You can specify a different keyboard layout with the keyboard.encoding variable. For example, to set your keyboard to Russian, just set this:

 keyboard.encoding=ru 

To get a complete list of all keyboard encodings supported by your release of OpenBSD, run "kdb -l". You should recognize your local keyboard layout easily enough.

Idle Screen Blank

If the system has been idle for some time, you might want the monitor to go blank to prevent burn-in. By default, the monitor will remain on; to have the screen blank automatically, you must define the conditions for the monitor to reactivate. You have three choices: mouse activity, keyboard activity, and monitor activity. Just set the appropriate value to "on" in /etc/wsconsctl.conf.

display.kbdact	Wake on keyboard activity
display.msact	Wake on mouse activity
display.outact	Wake on monitor output

For example, to have the monitor go blank but reactivate when you hit a key, just enter this in /etc/wsconsctl.conf:

 display.kbdact=on 

The display.screen_off variable sets the length of time until the screen goes black, in milliseconds. Here, we set it to 120 seconds.

 display.screen_off=120000 

Blanking a screen can be accomplished in two different ways: Turn the screen to black or use the "power saver" mode. A black screen will reactivate immediately upon demand, but it will use more power. A monitor that's set on power saver mode will take a few seconds longer to start back up. You can set power saver mode by turning display.vblank to "on." Of course, if you have an old monitor that doesn't believe in saving power, this won't work.