scrambled language and keyboard settings

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

Hi there.

My first post here, so please do not be too hard with me… :slight_smile:

Of course already searched t´he forum, but did not find any match for my problem - maybe wrong keywords? In that case - sorry…

Installed tumbleweed as minimal server, no gui/X, no yast.
During installtion I selected “englisch(US)” as my language, but I want a german keyboard layout. Installer accpeted these settings…

But something went wrong, already after first login I see an english keyboard and partially german languag (e.g. zypper reports in english).

In /etc/sysconfig/language is see "RC_LANG=“en_US.UTF-8”, nothing else.

Could anbody give ma an advice where to look or what to change to get my preferred language and keyboard setuo working?

Thank you in advance,
cheers
Martin

P.S.: Already checkd the 42.1 BETA, it looks like ths is no issue there (with same settings during installation), but could not determine whrere the differences are in configuration files…

#2

YaST->System->Language and YaST->Hardware->System Keyboard Layout (if it is set to german already, try to set it to something else first).

Or modify /etc/sysconfig/language and /etc/sysconfig/keyboard manually and run “mkinitrd”.

Another option would be to use localectl to set those settings.

The installer does not correctly set the selected keyboard layout and it doesn’t install the correct translation packages, but it should set the language itself correctly IME.
What does “locale” say?

PS: the german keyboard layout doesn’t seem to work at all at the moment, but try “German (with deadkeys)”.

#3

HI,

thank you for your answer.

The straneg thing is that on both systems, tumbleweed and 42.1, config files for /etc/sysconfig/language|keyboard are identical, also the output from locale, but the systems are different regarding language + keyboard…

 # locale
LANG=POSIX
LC_CTYPE="en_US.utf8"
LC_NUMERIC="POSIX"
LC_TIME="POSIX"
LC_COLLATE="POSIX"
LC_MONETARY="POSIX"
LC_MESSAGES="POSIX"
LC_PAPER="POSIX"
LC_NAME="POSIX"
LC_ADDRESS="POSIX"
LC_TELEPHONE="POSIX"
LC_MEASUREMENT="POSIX"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="POSIX"
LC_ALL=

grep -v "#" /etc/sysconfig/keyboard 
KEYTABLE=""

KBD_DELAY=""

KBD_RATE=""

KBD_NUMLOCK="bios"

KBD_SCRLOCK="no"

KBD_CAPSLOCK="no"

KBD_DISABLE_CAPS_LOCK="no"

KBD_TTY=""

COMPOSETABLE="clear latin1.add"

YAST_KEYBOARD="german,pc104"

grep -v "#" /etc/sysconfig/language 
RC_LANG="en_US.UTF-8"

RC_LC_ALL=""

RC_LC_MESSAGES=""

RC_LC_CTYPE=""

RC_LC_COLLATE=""

RC_LC_TIME=""

RC_LC_NUMERIC=""

RC_LC_MONETARY=""

RC_LC_PAPER=""

ROOT_USES_LANG="ctype"

AUTO_DETECT_UTF8="no"

INSTALLED_LANGUAGES=""

and no yast at all (as expected, I guess, because of the “minimal server with no X install”)

# which yast
which: no yast in (/sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/sbin:/root/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/games)
# which yast2
which: no yast2 in (/sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/sbin:/root/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/games)

Thank you & cheers

#4

Hi,

sorry, missed the vconsole.conf:

# cat /etc/vconsole.conf 
KEYMAP=de-nodeadkeys

changed to

# cat /etc/vconsole.conf 
KEYMAP=de-latin1-nodeadkeys

Now keyboard works.

Still wondering about the german translations. During installation never even touched the german language, always kept english (US). Or is this a basic feature of OpenSuse? Any idea how to get rid of the unwanted and unnecessary german translations?

Thank you & cheers

#5

Yeah, right.
Tumbleweed fully uses /etc/vconsole.conf now, on my 13.2 system the keyboard layout is still set in /etc/sysconfig/keyboard though.

grep -v "#" /etc/sysconfig/language 
RC_LANG="en_US.UTF-8"

This should be set to “de_DE.UTF-8” or similar, in my case (“minimal X server” installation) the installer did that.

and no yast at all (as expected, I guess, because of the “minimal server with no X install”)

Yeah, right. I thought you did a “minimal X server” installation which would have included YaST.
But “minimal server with no X install” is even more minimal, and does not include YaST…
You could install it though.[/QUOTE]

As mentioned, instead of modifying the config file directly, you could also use localectl.
See “man localectl”.

Still wondering about the german translations. During installation never even touched the german language, always kept english (US).

I thought you wanted to have german language as well.
Then RC_LOCALE=“en_US.UTF-8” is the right setting anyway.
And “locale” does confirm that your system locale is set to english.

Or is this a basic feature of OpenSuse? Any idea how to get rid of the unwanted and unnecessary german translations?

What german translations do you actually mean?
As I wrote, at the moment the installer doesn’t install the correct translations at all.

PS: “localectl status” or just “localectl” should give an overview over the actual locale and keyboard settings.

#6

Hi,

thank you for your help.

Sorry if I was not clear: I just want english as one and only language everywhere (while I need the german keyboard layout cause I have a german keyboard).

About the translations: If I connect with ssh to the system, locale settings from the client will be used. I know about that and how to change it.
Just wondering where the german translations came from from in that case. I guess there has to be a basic translations package somewhere (if some tools do not have basic translations included “by themselves”, not sure about that at the moment, to be honest).

Affected are very basic tools like mkfs.XXX; cat, zypper, nano (yes, still love it for quick edit), …, they show german help/error/menu messages.
Some (most) others show onyl english messages, and some tools do funny things and mix up english and german (even in strange combinations; e.g. “locate” shows the complete help message in english except the last line which tells me in germand where to send my error reports)…

So the question would not be how to just make the german translation disappear (with sshd_config I guess) but how did the german translations come on the system and how do I remove them?

Thank you so far, regards

#7

The translations are normally split out to *-lang sub packages. You can uninstall them if you only want english, they should only be recommended.

There are also “bundle packages” which contain all translations for a particular language, in particular: bundle-lang-xx-common, bundle-lang-xx-gnome, bundle-lang-xx-kde, and bundle-lang-xx-other. But you shouldn’t have them installed anyway.

Some applications might differ though, e.g. for Firefox there’s a MozillaFirefox-translations-common and a MozillaFirefox-translations-other.

Affected are very basic tools like mkfs.XXX;

Well, not all mkfs.XXX are in the same package, and most don’t even include translations.
Some are in util-linux-lang though.

cat, zypper, nano (yes, still love it for quick edit), …, they show german help/error/menu messages.

cat: coreutils-lang
zypper: the translations are part of the main package (and libzypp), no possibility to uninstall them
nano: nano-lang

Some (most) others show onyl english messages, and some tools do funny things and mix up english and german (even in strange combinations; e.g. “locate” shows the complete help message in english except the last line which tells me in germand where to send my error reports)…

Well, some (most) programs consist of several parts. You might have translations for one part installed but not for the other.

Also they might use some external libraries, and the translations from those then.