Knoppix upgrade changes English to German

**aay** · 08-04-2003, 07:56 AM

I recently added the Knoppix developers repistories to my /etc/apt/sources.list.

Code:

deb http://developer.linuxtag.net/knoppix/ ./
deb-src http://developer.linuxtag.net/knoppix/ ./

My problem is that after doing an apt-get update and apt-get upgrade, my shell is in German. I did an update to xmms and it's gui menu is now also in german. Most other console based programs that I have run are now in German too. Anyone else run into this, and if so is there a solution?

Thanks,

Adam

**aay** · 08-04-2003, 08:05 PM

Gaim is also in German now. This is nuts. Ideas anyone?

**Stephen** · 08-04-2003, 09:14 PM

Have you tried dpkg-reconfigure locales it looks like it may have been set to German somehow. Also you can override the settings by putting:

Code:

LANG=en_US
export LANG

In your .bash_profile or .bashrc you may also want to check in /etc/enviroment to see what is set too there and IIRC there is something in /etc/profile to do with the language in German for the shell.

**aay** · 08-04-2003, 10:49 PM

Originally Posted by Stephen

Have you tried dpkg-reconfigure locales it looks like it may have been set to German somehow. Also you can override the settings by putting:

Code:

LANG=en_US
export LANG

In your .bash_profile or .bashrc you may also want to check in /etc/enviroment to see what is set too there and IIRC there is something in /etc/profile to do with the language in German for the shell.

Stephen I ran dpkg-reconfigure locales and that didn't seem to help. I also looked in /etc/enviroment andthere was just one line: LANG=en_US so that doesn't appear to be the problem.

Your third suggestion seems to be hitting the mark though. I'm pasting in my /etc/profile.

Code:

# /etc/profile
umask 022
PATH="/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/games"
[ "$UID" = "0" ] || PATH="$PATH:."
export PATH
# Set LOCALE
if [ -f /etc/sysconfig/i18n ]; then
    . /etc/sysconfig/i18n
    [ -n "$LANG" ] || LANG="de_DE@euro"
    export LANG
    [ -n "$LC_CTYPE" ] && export LC_CTYPE || unset LC_CTYPE
    [ -n "$LC_COLLATE" ] && export LC_COLLATE || unset LC_COLLATE
    [ -n "$LC_MESSAGES" ] && export LC_MESSAGES || unset LC_MESSAGES
    [ -n "$LC_NUMERIC" ] && export LC_NUMERIC || unset LC_NUMERIC
    [ -n "$LC_MONETARY" ] && export LC_MONETARY || unset LC_MONETARY
    [ -n "$LC_TIME" ] && export LC_TIME || unset LC_TIME
    [ -n "$LC_ALL" ] && export LC_ALL || unset LC_ALL
    [ -n "$LANGUAGE" ] && export LANGUAGE || unset LANGUAGE
    [ -n "$LINGUAS" ] && export LINGUAS || unset LINGUAS
    [ -n "$_XKB_CHARSET" ] && export _XKB_CHARSET || unset _XKB_CHARSET

    if [ -n "$SYSFONTACM" ]; then
	case $SYSFONTACM in
	    iso01*|iso02*|iso15*|koi*|latin2-ucw*)
		if [ "$TERM" = "linux" ]; then
		    if ls -l /proc/$$/fd/0 2>/dev/null | grep -- '-> /dev/tty[0-9]*$' >/dev/null 2>&1; then
			echo -n -e '\033(K' > /proc/$$/fd/0
		    fi
		fi
		;;
	esac
    fi
    unset SYSFONTACM
fi
# END LOCALE
# enable bash completion in interactive shells
[ "$PS1" -a -f /etc/bash_completion ] && . /etc/bash_completion
TTY=$(tty)
TTY=${TTY##*/}
[ -n "$TTY" ] && PS1="\[[1;36m\]\u@$TTY[\W]\\$\[[0;39m\] " || PS1="\[[1;36m\][\W]\u\[[0;39m\] "
alias ..="cd .."
alias which="type -path"
alias where="type -all"
alias ll="ls -l --color=auto"
alias l="ls -a --color=auto"
alias rm="rm -i"
alias mv="mv -i"
alias cp="cp -i"
alias la="ls -la --color=auto"
alias ls="ls --color=auto"
# This is very KNOPPIX-specific
alias su="sudo su"

As you can see, the problem seems to be here:

Code:

 [ -n "$LANG" ] || LANG="de_DE@euro"
    export LANG

What do you have for that line?

Thanks

**Stephen** · 08-04-2003, 11:24 PM

I've got Bonzai Linux on here now which is basically an install of Woody, which I have taken to SID, without the pain of going through a normal install but in the backup of /etc from knoppix I have it just has the same as yours except it has LANG="de_DE" I would change it to en_US just to give it a try and see if it works. You never mentioned did you edit the .bash rc or profile to try and override the default that has been set to German also I take it you did do the obvious and checked the Regional & Accessibility to make sure the language is set properly there. You may also want to check the . directory's files for xmms and gaim to see if anything is being set there.

[edit]
Just had another thought remove all the kde-i18n-* locales and it has to default to C or POSIX which will give you an English default locale.
[/edit]

**aay** · 08-05-2003, 04:09 AM

Originally Posted by Stephen

I've got Bonzai Linux on here now which is basically an install of Woody, which I have taken to SID, without the pain of going through a normal install but in the backup of /etc from knoppix I have it just has the same as yours except it has LANG="de_DE" I would change it to en_US just to give it a try and see if it works. You never mentioned did you edit the .bash rc or profile to try and override the default that has been set to German

Yes I did this and it didn't help.

Originally Posted by Stephen

also I take it you did do the obvious and checked the Regional & Accessibility to make sure the language is set properly there. You may also want to check the . directory's files for xmms and gaim to see if anything is being set there.

Checked these and there really aren't any defaults to adjust. Plus I wouldn't want to do this for every gnome/gtk app - which seem to be the only ones affected by this.

Originally Posted by Stephen

[edit]
Just had another thought remove all the kde-i18n-* locales and it has to default to C or POSIX which will give you an English default locale.
[/edit]

Well, would this last suggestion really help seeing that nothing in KDE is giving me any problems - only gtk based apps.

Hmm. This is turning out to be a tough nut to crack, but I have made some progress.

First of all, even though I have allready edited /etc/profile as indicated above, I added an additional line export LC_ALL=C after the if/then statement.

That brought good results. My shell now is back to English.

But all the gnome/gtk apps are still in German.

I think I know why though.

Here is my /etc/sysconfig/i18n

Code:

LANG="de_DE@euro"
COUNTRY="de"
LANGUAGE="de"
CHARSET="iso8859-15"
XMODIFIERS=""

I changed it to:

Code:

LANG="en_US"
COUNTRY="en"
LANGUAGE="en"
CHARSET="iso8859-15"
XMODIFIERS=""

After I restarted X, this fixed the problem.

But unfortunately when I added the repositories listed in my first post in this thread and did an apt-get update, apt-get upgrade, this kind of brought my hdinstall back to more of a CD based version of Knoppix. All hardware detection, probing, etc is performed whenever I reboot. I even see the detection progress bar that normally only accompanies the CD version.

An effect of this is that /etc/sysconfig/i18n is rewritten with the German defaults whenever I reboot.

I tried appending the lang=us option to lilo, but that doesn't seem to do anything. So I guess now I either find the script that is updating /etc/sysconfig/i18n and modify it or I come up with some sort of hack to overwrite /etc/sysconfig/i18n with English defaults somewhere in the boot process. Thanks for sticking with me on this one. It's been a real pain. Suggestions still welcome.

**aay** · 08-05-2003, 04:52 AM

Ok Stephen I've gotten a fix. It's not the most elegant thing in the world but it works.

Like I said /etc/sysconfig/i18n keeps on being rewritten with the german defaults, but thankfully the English defaults that I loaded are saved as /etc/sysconfig/i18n.save before the file is overwritten.

So I added the following lines to /etc/init.d/bootmisc.sh

rm -rf /etc/sysconfig/i18n
cp /etc/sysconfig/i18n.save /etc/sysconfig/i18n
chmod +r /etc/sysconfig/i18n

This essentially fixes the problem. Like I said not the most elegant solution, but it works. Thanks for your help.

**Stephen** · 08-05-2003, 05:17 AM

[quote="aay"]

But unfortunately when I added the repositories listed in my first post in this thread and did an apt-get update, apt-get upgrade, this kind of brought my hdinstall back to more of a CD based version of Knoppix. All hardware detection, probing, etc is performed whenever I reboot. I even see the detection progress bar that normally only accompanies the CD version.

Interesting side effect for those people who complain that they want the HD install to be more like the CD as long as they could figure out how to get it to a language other than German.

And there I had this reply all set to post and I previewed it about to suggest just about the same thing and seen your reply I chopped most of it out although I would still suggest a post to the developers list someone has to know which file you need to edit.

**paradocs** · 08-05-2003, 05:47 AM

Hi All

I don't know much. But could the following help?:

At KNOPPIX root the variable for
the programming language is LANG

echo $LANG
C

your speaking language variable is LANGUAGE so

echo $LANGUAGE
de
export LANGUAGE=us

Best Wishes
paradocs