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setleds(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | BUGS | AUTHORS | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON 

SETLEDS(1)               General Commands Manual               SETLEDS(1)

NAME         top

       setleds - set the keyboard leds

SYNOPSIS         top

       setleds [-v] [-L] [-D] [-F] [{+|-}num] [{+|-}caps] [{+|-}scroll]

DESCRIPTION         top

       Setleds reports and changes the led flag settings of a VT (namely
       NumLock, CapsLock and ScrollLock).  Without arguments, setleds
       prints the current settings.  With arguments, it sets or clears
       the indicated flags (and leaves the others unchanged). The
       settings before and after the change are reported if the -v flag
       is given.

       The led flag settings are specific for each VT (and the VT
       corresponding to stdin is used).

       By default (or with option -F), setleds will only change the VT
       flags (and their setting may be reflected by the keyboard leds).

       With option -D, setleds will change both the VT flags and their
       default settings (so that a subsequent reset will not undo the
       change).  This might be useful for people who always want to have
       numlock set.

       With option -L, setleds will not touch the VT flags, but only
       change the leds.  From this moment on, the leds will no longer
       reflect the VT flags (but display whatever is put into them). The
       command setleds -L (without further arguments) will restore the
       situation in which the leds reflect the VT flags.

       One might use setleds in /etc/rc to define the initial and default
       state of NumLock, e.g. by
            INITTY=/dev/tty[1-8]
            for tty in $INITTY; do
                 setleds -D +num < $tty
            done

OPTIONS         top

       -num +num
              Clear or set NumLock.  (At present, the NumLock setting
              influences the interpretation of keypad keys.  Pressing the
              NumLock key complements the NumLock setting.)

       -caps +caps
              Clear or set CapsLock.  (At present, the CapsLock setting
              complements the Shift key when applied to letters.
              Pressing the CapsLock key complements the CapsLock
              setting.)

       -scroll +scroll
              Clear or set ScrollLock.  (At present, pressing the
              ScrollLock key (or ^S/^Q) stops/starts console output.)

BUGS         top

       In keyboard application mode the NumLock key does not influence
       the NumLock flag setting.

AUTHORS         top

       Andries Brouwer <[email protected]>

SEE ALSO         top

       loadkeys(1)

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the kbd (Linux keyboard tools) project.
       Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨http://www.kbd-project.org/⟩.  If you have a bug report for this
       manual page, send it to [email protected].  This page was
       obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/legionus/kbd.git⟩ on 2025-08-11.  (At that
       time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2025-07-01.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is
       a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       [email protected]

kbd                            24 Sep 1994                     SETLEDS(1)

Pages that refer to this page: kbdinfo(1),  ioctl_console(2)

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