If you try to set the default console fonts on SSH or from local xterm, you get: # consolechars -d set_kernel_font: Invalid argument On console this seems to work fine. /etc/sysconfig/i18n: --- LANG="en_US" --- This happens with RHL 6.2 too, at least.
This is intentional - setting different characters from anything but the console doesn't make sense. Also, adding this would be impossible - You can't use ioctl() on devices that are used by someone else.