#477704 console-common: Console not set to UFT-8

Package:
console-common
Source:
console-common
Submitter:
Arnout Boelens
Date:
2011-10-19 10:39:11 UTC
Severity:
normal
#477704#5
Date:
2008-04-24 17:39:57 UTC
From:
To:
The other day I switched the locale for my system from en_GB.UTF-8 to
en_US.UFT-8, and as a result UFT encoding stopped working on my system.

However, when I do unicode_start as root and then login as normal user from the
same console, unicode encoding works and all my filenames are displayed
correctly again.
#477704#10
Date:
2008-04-25 05:35:35 UTC
From:
To:
Quoting Arnout Boelens (aboelens@engin.umass.edu):


Longstanding bug which no-one found a solution for, yet.

unicode_start is run in /etc/init.d/keymap.sh but, at that moment, the
console is not initialized yet...
#477704#15
Date:
2008-04-25 05:35:35 UTC
From:
To:
Quoting Arnout Boelens (aboelens@engin.umass.edu):


Longstanding bug which no-one found a solution for, yet.

unicode_start is run in /etc/init.d/keymap.sh but, at that moment, the
console is not initialized yet...
#477704#20
Date:
2008-04-30 17:09:49 UTC
From:
To:
Is there any more convenient work-around known?
#477704#25
Date:
2008-04-30 17:09:49 UTC
From:
To:
Is there any more convenient work-around known?
#477704#30
Date:
2008-05-23 19:59:32 UTC
From:
To:
I just installed the console-setup package, and this solved my problems!
#477704#35
Date:
2011-10-19 10:36:15 UTC
From:
To:
I clashed into this bug but the other way around. My system is free of
UTF-8 waste but the console get set to UTF-8 by this init script.

The problem is that unicode_stop (as also the start tool) is in /usr/bin
which is not available in this early state of boot. But puting $local_fs
to dependencies do not help as other init scripts depends on keymap.

One solution would be putting the unicode_{start,stop} tools to /bin.
However that is not the best solution.

One other would be to split that init script to two scripts. One running
first and providing keymap and minimal keyboard settings and one running
last after every file system is mounted that set the full keymap. This
is the solution I use at the moment for work around. But it is also not
so beautiful.

One another solution, and in my opinion the best, would be to break the
dependency of other packages and move keyboard setup to later state when
everything is available. Why I prefer this solution is that in emergency
case when I need the console earlier I expect the console in the state
the BIOS set. Also this would move a bit complexity that can go wrong to
later state.

Using console-setup is no solution as it kills the 8 beautiful penguins
I like in the top row when booting. :-) It also clears the screen so
that debugging is much harder. Finally it is one unnecessary package and
every unnecessary package should be eliminated.