[SOLVED] xbian ssh german keyboard support

[p.falk]

Hello,

when I try to access xbian (1.0 beta 2) via ssh I can switch to german keyboard (qwertz) in xbian-config but several keys won't work (ä = ä ö = ö ü = ü ß = ß ). These are necessary for correct filename spelling. Furthermore all the config menus in German miss these characters and have ? instead.
I tried several ways as described in different Xbian/Raspbian/Debian forums, but none did work.

Any hints, esp. for Xbian?

Thanks
Peter

[IriDium]

Try:

Log into RPI with ssh
Run this command as root

Terminal

export LC_ALL=$LANG

See if that improves things!

[p.falk]

(4th Jan, 2014 05:08 AM)IriDium Wrote:  Try:

Log into RPI with ssh
Run this command as root

Terminal

export LC_ALL=$LANG

See if that improves things!

Hello IriDium,

unfortunately that did not change anything.

Thx
Peter

[IriDium]

I assume you have a UTF-8 locale?

You could try generating the correct locale with
sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales
selecting xx_xx.UTF-8, choose as default and then reboot

Where xx is the closest - probably de_DE

then execute the previous export command.

Have you tried xbian-config via ssh?

If none of those work, it would be best to wait a while, we have German users who may be able to give more detailed advise.

[p.falk]

(4th Jan, 2014 06:02 AM)IriDium Wrote:  I assume you have a UTF-8 locale?

You could try generating the correct locale with
sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales
selecting xx_xx.UTF-8, choose as default and then reboot

Where xx is the closest - probably de_DE

then execute the previous export command.

Have you tried xbian-config via ssh?

If none of those work, it would be best to wait a while, we have German users who may be able to give more detailed advise.

I tried all that, but it did not solve the problem, even though xbian-config states that locales were updated (see 2 images before and after updating the locale in xbian-config)
system_locale
system_locale_success

so the problem is still there. Could it be that there is a problem with the sources for German locales, could I possibly take that from raspbian? how?
Thx for your support
Peter

[IriDium]

@p.falk

Very strange.

Hang fire - and let other users comment. @CurlyMo Is a German user and an ex developer - he should know if anyone should. So it should be sorted soon.

Sorry I couldn't assist any further.

[Smultie]

Curlymo is Dutch....

[mk01]

@p.falk

this are basic prerequisites:

1 - "locale -a" shows de_DE.utf8 on your system
2 - running "locale" from ssh (connected to xbian) throws no error
3 - font you are using in the linux xterm application is UTF-8

considering the above conditions, this is outcome of my test:

Terminal

root@xbian ~ # 1234567890ß´ü+#öä,.-!"§$%&/()=?`Ü*'ÖÄ;:_

[p.falk]

as it works with your (@mk01) xbian installation, I assumed I configured something wrong, so I did a fresh install today. Still there are no German special characters available. Neither before nor after "apt-get upgrade"
here is the output from running "locale":

Terminal

LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=
LC_CTYPE=C
LC_NUMERIC="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=

if I try

Code:

export LC_ALL=$LANG

as mentioned by IriDium earlier, that fills the line for LC_ALL, but still no äöüß.

Any further hints are welcome.

Thx
Peter

[mk01]

@p.falk,

if we are still referring to terminal access (not direct console access), then for very little is XBian responsible.

console access needs proper font configuration to display characters. to type them, proper keyboard layout needs to be set. but for remote access you receive only codes. displaying them is on your local terminal program and OS.

as you can see from next screen shot - it is Ubuntu, gnome term and ssh into XBian even with en_US locale running. I did nothing else as added German keyboard layout and logged into XBian.

btw: this is locale on Ubuntu:

Code:

LANG=sk_SK.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=
LC_CTYPE=UTF-8
LC_NUMERIC=sk_SK.UTF-8
LC_TIME=sk_SK.UTF-8
LC_COLLATE="sk_SK.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY=sk_SK.UTF-8
LC_MESSAGES="sk_SK.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER=sk_SK.UTF-8
LC_NAME=sk_SK.UTF-8
LC_ADDRESS=sk_SK.UTF-8
LC_TELEPHONE=sk_SK.UTF-8
LC_MEASUREMENT=sk_SK.UTF-8
LC_IDENTIFICATION=sk_SK.UTF-8
LC_ALL=

---

@p.falk

still, I remember a guy from spain who reported your case for Beta2, but it was related to Debian 7.2 updates. part of this '?' was also perl throwing errors about missing LC_CTYPE setting etc.

both are specifically fixed in xbian-update 1.0.2-11d which is in staging repo, but safe for install. or you can just create

/etc/profile.d/xbian-locale.sh

Code:

#!/bin/sh

[ -e /etc/default/locale ] && . /etc/default/locale
export LC_CTYPE=C
[ -n "$LANG" ] && export LC_ALL=$LANG

then logout and login again.
sorry, I didn't remember sooner. if you confirm (even better by installing whole xbian-update at least with the 11d version, I will push from staging to stable. among other things the 11d is also solving the OOM issue with dpkg and 256models. this should really go out.

[p.falk]

I guess this was the crucial hint

(8th Jan, 2014 06:09 AM)mk01 Wrote:  console access needs proper font configuration to display characters. to type them, proper keyboard layout needs to be set. but for remote access you receive only codes. displaying them is on your local terminal program and OS.

I found additional info on a debian forum
http://serverfault.com/questions/301896/how-to-fix-locale-settings-in-debian-squeeze

Quote:If you are getting the errors while ssh'ing to a remote system, and don't want to modify the remote system (by changing the sshd_config, for instance), you can do the following on your local system (assuming bash)

Code:

export LC_ALL=en_US
export LANGUAGE=en_US

and then ssh user@remote

so I added that to my local .bashrc and now it works.

Thank you very much for helping me to find that solution
Peter

[mk01]

that one fixes only yours connects from the one pc, but at the end LC_ALL gets pushed to XBian so will be populated at the end.

I missed history of that one in Debian but sadly there is more bugs years old at Debian reappearing with each second OS release. If I would be a bit paranoid a call it intention.

good day!