Language setup

**tathraman** · 09-22-2005, 01:29 AM

I have a Knoppix 4.0 Linux Tag edition, bought on EBay. I've tried to set the language to English, both at startup and from the system tray, but everything remains in German. How do I get around this? TIA David

**rwcitek** · 09-22-2005, 06:05 AM

Originally Posted by tathraman

How do I get around this?

You said you tried at start up and in the system tray. What exactly did you try? Can you do it again and then run this code in a root terminal shell:

Code:

( set -x
cat /etc/knoppix-version
cat /proc/cmdline
cat /etc/sysconfig/knoppix
printenv
) >& post.txt

Please post the contents of post.txt here. BTW, on a US-101 keyboard with a German configuration, the forward slash (/) is Shift+7, ampersand (&) is Shift+6, and greater-than (>) is Alt+62 (you must use the numeric keypad to enter 62).

Of course, it is entirely possible that the DVD you got was German-only.

Regards,
- Robert
http://www.cwelug.org

**tathraman** · 09-22-2005, 07:47 AM

Robert - thanks for your reply. I'm very much out of my depth with this - if you have the time and patience to help, I'd really appreciate it - if not, I quite understand that you probably have better things to do. First, I wouldn't know how to go about following your suggestion re root shell etc. What I did was to boot my computer up with the DVD, after having [with great trepidation] gone into BIOS and making the change. This then gave me a welcome screen that appeared to offer a choice of languages - I clicked on EN. When the program opened, still in German, I noticed a flag icon in the system tray, if that's what it's called in this system. That gave the choice of German, US English and a couple of others. I clicked the English icon - but no no avail.
BTW - the DVD I bought has a lanaguage option and displays in English, which makes me doubt that the disc is in German only

**rwcitek** · 09-23-2005, 04:00 PM

Originally Posted by tathraman

This then gave me a welcome screen that appeared to offer a choice of languages - I clicked on EN.

Interesting. This sounds very different from the downloadable DVD. When I boot the DVD, I get a boot prompt, boot: It sounds like you are getting something else. Or do you get a boot prompt?

Regards,
- Robert
http://www.cwelug.org

**tathraman** · 09-23-2005, 11:32 PM

I've had a very helpful response via another forum which has helped me a lot. It said: " When Knoppix begins to boot you will see a screen that says:
Press keys F2 or F3 for help and boot options KNOPPIX V3.8 ...boot:

The cursor will be sitting there blinking at the bottom of the screen next to the word boot:, simply type knoppix lang=us and press the Enter/Return key and you change the keyboard/language to US english.
This works!
David

**rwcitek** · 09-24-2005, 12:26 AM

Originally Posted by tathraman

The cursor will be sitting there blinking at the bottom of the screen next to the word boot:, simply type knoppix lang=us and press the Enter/Return key and you change the keyboard/language to US english.
This works!
David

Glad to hear you got it working. Can you post the URL of the forum where you found help?

BTW, what you did is known as using a "cheatcode." For a list of them have a look at the Cheatcodes documentation. For example, another cheatcode you may wish to try is dma, which turns on Direct Memory Access (DMA) for harddisks and CDs. By default DMA is turned off because on some buggy systems it does not work too well. But on those systems where it does work, DMA can speed up disk read/write performance by a factor of 10 or more. Give it a shot with this:

boot: knoppix dma lang=us

Good luck and let us know how things go.

Regards,
- Robert
http://www.cwelug.org