Hello,
If you only need user/desktop environment support for languages, you don't have to install anything special in RedHat 9 to see languages other than English. I recentally installed Red Hat 9 with all the defaults and was able to set up default VNC/gnome-session in French for a user.
Here's how I did it:
I logged myself off the server while on the console, to get all the way back to the login screen.
At the lower left there are menus for session options. I chose Language->French
I kept the other settings the same (Gnome, etc.)
I logged in and invoked the command line.
I typed "printenv"
I looked for all the places where French was mentioned, and found these two lines:
LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8
GDM_LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8
I edited my .cshrc to set these environment variables automatically:
#french language support
setenv LANG fr_FR.UTF-8
setenv GDM_LANG fr_FR.UTF-8
(If you use BASH you need to export the variables; slightly different syntax)
I went over to a remote PC, logged in from scratch (with PUTTY), invoked vncserver, and voila! Linux a la Francaise.
I hope this helps. I had a heck of a time figuring it out because the gnome docs (
http://www.gnome.org/i18n ) don't tell you how to find out the exact language file to specify.
If you want all the man pages, etc, I think you have to do this (pasted from the RH9 installation docs):
To change the language configuration after you have completed the installation, use the Language Configuration Tool.
Type the "redhat-config-language" command in a shell prompt to launch the Language Configuration Tool. If you are not root, it will prompt you for the root password to continue.
To get more languages listed there, maybe you can go back and do a custom upgrade with the same discs you used for the install, and select the language(s) you want? That should leave the other system and user files intact.
Good luck!
