17 January 2013

How to Take a Screenshot of the Terminal Output in Text Mode (TTY) - Ubuntu/Linux Mint



Sometimes, we may need to use some screenshots of the output of commands executed in text mode so that we find effective solutions to our problems in Ubuntu/Linux Mint help forums or Q&A websites. The text mode (tty) can be enabled by pressing CTRL+ALT+F1, F2, F3, etc. Taking screenshots of the output returned in CLI mode can be easily done with the fbcat tool which is available in the official Ubuntu repository.

Getting Started

To install fbcat in Ubuntu/Linux Mint, open the terminal and run this command:

sudo apt-get install fbcat

Now while working in text mode, you can take screenshot of the output returned using this command:

sudo fbcat > image.ppm

Here is a screenshot taken with this useful tool:


The fbcat tool supports only the ppm format, but you can convert it to PNG or any other format using ImageMagick:

sudo apt-get install imagemagick

Start then the conversion as follows:

convert image.ppm output.png