Installation Manual

When you use Textcons, the presentation of colors, characters, and screen controls depends
on the client you are using, which can be any standard SSH client compatible with iLO. Features
and support include the following:
• Display of text-mode screens that are 80x25 (standard color configurations), including:
System boot process (POST)◦
◦ Standard option ROMs
◦ Text boot loaders (boot loaders without a frame buffer)
◦ Linux operating system in VGA 80x25 mode
◦ DOS
◦ Other text-based operating systems
• International language keyboards (if the server and client systems have a similar
configuration)
• Line-drawing characters when the correct font and code page are selected in the client
application
Customizing the Text-based Remote Console
You can use the textcons command options and arguments to customize the Text-based
Remote Console display. In general, you do not need to change these options.
• To control the sampling rate:
Use the textcons speed option to indicate, in ms, the time between each sampling period.
A sampling period is when the iLO firmware examines screen changes and updates the
Text-based Remote Console. Adjusting the speed can alleviate unnecessary traffic on long
or slow network links, reduce bandwidth use, and reduce iLO CPU time. Hewlett Packard
Enterprise recommends that you specify a value between 1 and 5,000 (1 ms to 5 seconds).
For example:
textcons speed 500
• To control smoothing:
iLO attempts to transmit data only when it changes and becomes stable on the screen. If a
line of the text screen is changing faster than iLO can sample the change, the line is not
transmitted until it becomes stable.
When a Text-based Remote Console session is active, the data is displayed rapidly and is
indecipherable. If iLO transmits this indecipherable data across the network, it consumes
bandwidth. The default behavior is smoothing (delay 0), which transmits data only when
the changes become stable on the screen. You can control or disable smoothing by using
the delay option. For example:
textcons speed 500 delay 10
• To configure character mapping:
In the ASCII character set, CONTROL characters (ASCII characters less than 32) are not
printable and are not displayed. These characters can be used to represent items such as
arrows, stars, or circles. Some of the characters are mapped to equivalent ASCII
representations. Table 7 (page 230) lists the supported equivalents.
Using a text-based Remote Console 229