# After four days, I'm asking you for HELP! UTF-8 on EEE PC

## ManDay

Hello, first I'd like to thank the guys on IRC ( amitprakash to name one ), they have tried everything possible but all our efforts were not enough.

 UTF-8 in /dev/tty* is not working! Random UTF-8 characters are boxed question marks!

After trying everything that I deemed possible I even reinstalled Gentoo, FROM SCRATCH! 

No UTF-8.

Locales are all en_US.UTF-8, I've tried generating en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8 and en_US UTF-8.  Latter works on my other pc, flawlessly. The two PCs do, apart from the kernel, have the exact same configuration. On my big box everything runs perfectly, UTF-8 everywehre, native TTYs included. On the EEE Pc I just can't get it to work. UNICODE="yes" in rc.conf. locale is set in environment. Consolefonts DO exist.

With default8x16.psfu.bz  I get hardly any UTF-8. Not that I only had the Latin1 codepage! NO! Random characters are missing and displayed as [?]. For example the arrows →→←← are visible, so are ¢ and a few others. but other are question marks!

With LatArCyrHeb-16 I get every UTF-8 character! Problem solved? NO! While UTF-8 looks fine all control characters become underscores _ - not really underscores tho, a little thicker and with a dark spot in the middle.

anyway, it sould work with default8x16, too, works for everyone BUT me (or, for that matter, on the specific box).

I've tried it all! It MUST be a kernel thing! But what is there in the kernel that affects the displaying of UTF-8 in the native TTYs? and why are only a few random UTF-8 characters for every consolefont wiped out?!

Please, im DESPERATE! Help me with anything you have. ill reformat my harddrive if wished for, just get me anything to work with.

A (working) EEE Pc (1000)   kernel config maybe, anyone?

kindly,

manday w/o utf-9

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## slangdaddy

Hi ManDay,

I dont' know if it matters, but do you have

```
CONFIG_NLS_DEFAULT="utf8"

CONFIG_NLS_UTF8=y
```

in your kernel config ? (menuconfig: File systems->Nativ language support)

----------

## ambasta

Hi,

I can confirm that he had

CONFIG_NLS_DEFAULT="utf8"

CONFIG_NLS_UTF8=y

set in his kernel

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## slangdaddy

As you say the only difference between your setups is the kernel configuration, did you try to diff those configurations ?

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## ManDay

Hi, as ambasta said, I've got NLS_UTF8 set up, either way, I think that's just for the filesystems. Diffing my kernel would not get me far, the two kernels are completely diffeerent, a big maschine vs a small eee pc.

I'll try to genkernel in an hour or so, right now emerge is running through the whole system.

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## toralf

Doesn't UTF-8 belongs to the package sys-libs/glibc-2.11.2 too ? Therefore does the output of "locale -a" satisfies your expectations ?

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## ManDay

```
locale -a

C

en_US

en_US.utf8

POSIX
```

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## toralf

fine, and you set LC_* and/or LANG accordingly to your needs, eg. I have :

```
n22 ~ # env | grep -e LC -e LANG

LC_CTYPE=de_DE.utf8

```

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## ManDay

Hello, so I've just tried to use a genkernel to figure out whether there is something wrong with my kernel but that failed. As for the locale:

This is the EXACT same setup as on my other machine, so there is nothing wrong with my locales.

If you have any further tips (or an EEE Pc kernel) I'd GREATLY appreciate it! Thanks!

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## fau

What codepage do you need?

What is your keymaps charset?

How do you test it? Typing characters isn't best idea as there may be problems with your keymap. You should create utf-8 file with some characters and test your console driver by viewing it. Manpages aren't good way to test it neither.

Try this:

```

printf '\033%%G' \\ set console display driver to unicode mode

kbd_mode -u \\ set kbd driver to unicode mode

setfont -m trivial default8x16.pfsu.gz \\ remove unwanted cmap/unicode console map (if there is any)

loadkeys -u ... \\ load your keymap here (with conversion to unicode, current baselayout/openrc don't do it)

```

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