Originally Posted by
jacksbutler
I am in UK. Thanks a lot.
Hi Jack,
Knoppix has several cheat code that allow the user to specify what language and keyboard they are using and which timezone they are in. This is a Knoppix home-grown mechanism that sits atop to 'normal' mechanisms. It does the business for most people.
If that isn't adequate, you can drop the cheat codes and alter the files that the cheat codes cause Knoppix to alter to get just what you want.
I don't have a HD install so I haven't had the pleasure of fiddling with cheat codes with a HD install. After having some folks say "Yes" and other say "No", I am grateful to Werner for confirming that cheat codes are alive and well with the HD install: you just have to understand grub instead of syslinux.
Assuming your HD Knoppix is running, open a console and type in:
This shows you all the cheat codes used to boot your Knoppix. I expect among these you've got:
which sets things up for use on the East Coast of the US. Knoppix tries the set the 'country', 'language', 'keyboard' and 'timezone' from just the one cheat code. This works fine in Germany but not so well in elsewhere. For someone in the UK, such as yourself, the quick answer is to try:
but that does not work in Knoppix 6.4.4: by mistake this cheat code gives you a Ukranian X keyboard and lots of grief. The international language symbol uk means ukranian and the X windows system honours this but the Knoppix cheat codes are based on the much older convention used for console terminals (ctrl+alt+F1) that most people hardly ever use. BTW I think that lang=ie for Ireland had the same ukranian issue.
To set the keyboard and X keyboard to something other than that implied by the lang= cheat code use the following cheat codes:
Code:
keyboard=uk
xkeyboard=gb
or whatever you fancy. To set the time zone, as Werner suggests, use:
because Berlin in generally an hour ahead of London.
I don't know all the details of time zones but Knoppix doesn't use the normal Linux mechanism. I think this is so that Knoppix should display the correct local time regardless of whether local time or UTC is stored in CMOS. Windows systems store local time but Linux systems store UTC. Dual-boot systems have a small issue with this except in the countries like the UK where local time is UTC+0. The suggestion from Krishna I think is an attempt
to reinstate the normal Linux mechanism. If that works for you and you are happy with it ... then fine.
There is another snag with the time zones. I think. Since Knoppix 6.4.4 came out, the Debian project rearranged its repositories, renaming the volatile repository. This is the repository that contains the timezone information about when summer time starts and ends etc. I found the time displayed to my Knoppix in a virtual machine at work was an hour behind the time displayed by the Windows host and I suspect this is because the repository renaming snag.
If you find the cheat codes don't give you what you want all is not lost. These cheat code are interpreted by the famous script /etc/init.d/knoppix.autoconfig. This script generates no less than five other files containing definitions used by Knoppix, Linux, X Windows, KDE and other applications. You can alter cheat codes, knoppix.autoconfig or the five files or some confusing combination of the three.
The notes below assume your rationalisation is to leave the big scary knoppix.autoconfig alone, not use any cheat codes and alter the five files to suit. Here's approximately what I came up with:
Code:
$ cat /etc/timezone
Europe/London
Enough said.
Code:
$ cat /etc/sysconfig/keyboard
KEYTABLE="us"
XKEYBOARD="us,gb"
KDEKEYBOARD="us,gb"
KDEKEYBOARDS=""
I worked in Europe a lot with different keyboards. To stay sane I always set the keyboard to "us" and just don't look at the keys. The XKEYBOARD setting allows the keyboard layout to be switched at run time if necessary (when I let someone else use my Knoppix). The separate KDE settings I suspect are redundant but KK is sentimental.
Code:
$ cat/etc/sysconfig/il8n
LANG="en_GB"
COUNTRY="gb"
LANGUAGE="en_GB:en"
CHARSET="utf8"
XMODIFIERS=""
This is another Knoppix specific configuration file. I'm not happy with it. The first entry, LANG= is the Unix/Linux locale. I tried en_GB.UTF-8 to be like Debian and then en_US.UTF-8 but both seem to be invalid under Knoppix (6.4.4). I'm not convinced the CHARSET has much effect either. For the US and UK, Knoppix uses ISO8859-1, otherwise known a Latin-1 or International Western European. For Germany and other Euro countries (including Ireland), Knoppix uses ISO8859-15, which adds the € and shuffles some other interesting characters around.
If you ever need to change a Knoppix script that contains German help text in it, make sure you tell the editor you are using the script in question is in ISO8859-15.
There was some chap from Russia the other day complaining that Knoppix did not display the non-US (ASCII) characters in filenames on his Windows hard drive correctly. I suspect that is because CHARSET was not set to what he needed it to be set to.
I input characters that are not on a US keyboard using the X compose key mechanism. This does not work with the default local LANG=C, which is what you get if you use the EN edition as is.
Code:
$ cat /etc/environment
LANG="en_GB"
LANGUAGE="en_GB:en"
LC_MESSAGES="en_GB"
This is a Debian rather than a Knoppix configuration file. I think. The declarations I use hint that I want British English, if available. Actually, despite using the EN edition of Knoppix, I found the internationalisation packages, like spell checkers, are the German versions and I had to replace them all but that's another topic.
Code:
$ cat /etc/default/keyboard
XKBMODEL="pc105"
XKBLAYOUT="us,gb"
XKBVARIANT=""
XKDOPTIONS="terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp,grp:alt_caps_toggle,shift:breaks_caps,compose:menu"
This is an X Windows configuration file. I used to specify this keyboard stuff in /etc/X11/xorg.conf, another file Knoppix tends to rewrite for you. The first says I've a bog standard keyboard with 105 keys (as is the case throughout Europe I believe - in the US they tend to use pc104). The second allows me to toggle between keyboard layouts and the final line says, among other things, left-alt+caps key pair toggles between layouts.
Note the terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp is the Knoppix default and allows you to restart a (broken) X session with the ctrl+alt+bksp key triple. This is jolly useful as utu will confirm. It is no longer the X windows default: apparently the good folks that use the Big Brown distribution are so inept they type these three keys by mistake and claim this means their distribution isn't user friendly enough. 
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