Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Kernel update messed up console encoding

[Florian v. Savigny]

Hi Nikos,

  > Maybe the commands "unicode_start" and "unicode_stop" might help.

Bull's eye! "unicode_stop" reverses the behavior completely to what
the old kernel did.

I looked inside; both are actually shell scripts; unicode_stop is very
simple: 

  kbd_mode -a
  if test -t ; then
	echo -n -e '\033%@'
  fi

unicode_start does a little more (also change the keyboard mapping and
choose a unicode font), but it also contains

  kbd_mode -u

and 

  if test -t 1 -a -t 2 ; then
	  echo -n -e '\033%G'
  fi

So the escape sequences are 'ESC % @' and 'ESC % G'. Thanks very much
for this collaborate effort! 

Simultaneously, the unnamed user (sorry, I just forgot to ask whether
he minds being named or not) told me to try the kernel parameter
"vt.default_utf8=0", and that does the trick as well. So the smoothest
workaround will now be putting that into lilo.conf (yes, I know, I'm
hopelessly old-fashioned - old encodings, old bootloaders ... ;-)).

I think I'll continue on a kernel list to figure out what kernel
2.6.27 does differently from 2.6.17, and why (and whether that
behaviour cannot be changed with a compile-time option). I think that
part is really not a gentoo-specific question. But I'll report here
when I get the result!

Best regards!
Florian