[SOLVED] terminal fonts are messed up.

Habitual · 07-21-2012, 02:43 PM

Can anyone give me a clue how to fix this?
Happens as root and user, but only in terminals. System is only 4 days old.

Thank you for your time.

GazL · 07-21-2012, 02:56 PM

Run the setconsolefont dialog and choose a font that matches the locale ($LANG) you're using. ncurses is most likely expecting to find line graphics at those codepoints in the character set, but the console font you're using has accented character glyphs in those locations.

Habitual · 07-21-2012, 05:44 PM

Thanks GazL:

But I have run setconsolefont and every font I choose comes with a "Well, what do you think" preview but nothing changes...

It suggests editing /etc/rc.d/rc.font, but that has a clue...

Code:

ls -al /usr/share/kbd/consolefonts

but nothing there resembles my "$LANG" (en_US)

Things are great at console, btw,

Thank you,

GazL · 07-21-2012, 07:41 PM

Are you talking about a terminal emulator such as xterm, konsole, or Terminal? If so then the consolefonts won't help. I thought you were referring to the console.

If you're using a terminal program then you'll need to check it's preferences for the font it's using. Some terminals also let you change the encoding in their preferences/menu rather than using the value of $LANG so you'll need to check that that is correct also.

Personally, I use the "Deja Vu Sans Mono font" in xterm and it works fine with en_GB (which uses iso8859-1 just like en_US does)

tty13 · 07-22-2012, 06:49 AM

Hi, if you are not using English you need unicode to get line drawing chars, that means you can not use the iso* fonts but must use the lat* fonts or fonts that end in *.psfu.gz

edit:
mm, I don remember if this is enough, you may need to switch LANG to utf-8 in your /etc/profile.d/lang.sh, just read that file and see what to do, but just start with the font.

Habitual · 07-22-2012, 07:38 AM

Thanks all, tty13 nailed it.
edited /etc/profile.d/lang.sh and changed
from

Code:

export LANG=en_US

to

Code:

export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

logout|in.

Done.

GazL · 07-22-2012, 09:26 AM

Switching to a UTF-8 locale will have the side effect of putting all your apps into UTF-8 mode (Well, those that take notice of the locale) and you might not want that.

I have no problem with the graphic characters in the non UTF-8 "en_GB" locale, which is very similar to en_US, However, I do have the following in my lilo.conf, that leave the console in ascii mode, rather than utf-8 mode which is likely significant.

Code:

append=" vt.default_utf8=0"

Before you jump into the world of utf-8 variable length characters, you might want to try LANG=en_US and vt.default_utf8=0 kernel option and the default console font.

Habitual · 07-22-2012, 09:46 AM

GazL:

console does not exhibit the reported issue. Problems existed in terminal emulators.

Since you mentioned lilo, I did add a compact option to mine a day or so ago...but haven't noticed anything except a a faster boot up, so I'd be hesitant to say the two (lilo edit + font issue) were/are related.

Thanks.

GazL · 07-22-2012, 10:02 AM

No, the vt.defaut_utf8 kernel parameter is not related if you're not talking about the console tty.. I and I guess tty13 as he was talking about psfu fonts were still under the impression you were talking about the console.

Nevermind, If you're happy with running in the utf-8 locale then I'll leave it with you.