In Slackware 14.2, I set $LANG in /etc/profile.d/lang.sh to en_US.UTF-8. However, the per user $LANG doesn't follow the global $LANG and when I execute
I get
(except when I execute it as root after su -)

I think that this problem happened after upgrading from alien's KDE 5_16.06 to 5_16.07.
any help or any clue where to start from to solve this problem is greatly appreciated.

Have you verified /etc/profile.d/lang.sh is executable by "others"?

Yes, it's fine.

when you say "per user $LANG", are you sure you don't have a ~/.bash_profile or ~/.bashrc that sets your lang to en_US?

Looking at your output, it seems you are not doing a login shell, so it doesn't process /etc/profile or anything in your /etc/profile.d/ directory.

Try running su - $your-username, type in your password and then see what the output of echo $LANG is.

If it is the correct lang, you need to change your terminal to use a login prompt or set $LANG in your .bashrc.

2 members found this post helpful.

Yes, I have no ~/.bash_profile or ~/.bashrc .

After su - $my-username,
returned the right value. So, I created a .bashrc file and set $LANG in it and since then echo $LANG returns en_US.UTF-8. But non-English characters are still not shown correctly in Dolphin and other KDE window managers.

What is preventing me from doing a login shell?

How may I change my terminal to use a login prompt?

What terminal do you use?

Konsole

Konsole does not start a login shell by default. You need to configure that in the settings for your profile. The LANG setting in /etc/profile.d will not be used if you are not starting a login shell.

Unfortunately, I am at work and don't have the ability to give you the exact location, but somewhere under the settings menu there's an option to edit your profile. Go there and then find the place where it's calling /bin/bash and change it to /bin/bash -l (that's a lower case L, not an uppercase i).

In a traditional X environment $LANG would be inherited down the process-tree from it's parents. I can't speak for KDE as I neither like nor install it, but I certainly don't need to have my xterms run a 'login shell' simply to have the value of $LANG visible. If LANG is not set in the environment of whatever is launching your applications within X then something is broken and making konsole run a login shell is simply masking the issue in one specific place and IMO focusing on that is barking up the wrong tree.

But then in these days of systemd-localed, and dbus interfaces to do everything god only knows what craziness ensues in desktops like kde that have bought into Poettering's vision, hook, line and sinker.


Sorry, can't help further as I don't have KDE available to play with... just wanted to say I don't think making it a 'login shell' is the right answer.

Are you logging in from the terminal and doing a manual startx, or are you logging in via kdm or xdm (or something else?) in runlevel 4?

With konsole, I don't think it matters. I never had it inherit anything from my normal shells whether I was runlevel 3 or 4. My PS1 was never user@computer (I think it just said bash-4.3 $).

One of his complaints was that Dolphin (which he presumably runs right from inside KDE, not bothering to start a terminal emulator to (re)load his profile and then manually typing 'dolphin' on the commandline) has the wrong LANG setting. That will be inherited from his X Windows session, so finding out how he starts his X Windows is relevant.