Generally, the text mode setup is the easiest way to show and input Cyrillic characters. There is one significant complication, however: the text mode fonts and keyboard layout manipulations depend on terminal driver implementation. Therefore, there is no portable way to achieve the goal across different systems.
Right now, I describe the way to deal with the Linux console driver. Thus, if you have another system, don't expect it to work for you. Instead, consult your terminal driver manual. Nevertheless, send me any information you find, so I'll be able to include it in further versions of this document.
The Linux console driver is quite a flexible piece of software. It is capable of changing fonts as well as keyboard layouts. To achieve it, you'll need the kbd package. Both RedHat and Slackware install kbd as part of a system.
The kbd package contains keyboard control utilities as well as a big collection of fonts and keyboard layouts.
Cyrillic setup with kbd usually involves two things:
setfont program. The fonts files are located in
/usr/lib/kbd/consolefonts.
NOTE: Never run the setfont program under X because it will hang
your system. This is because it works with low-level video card calls
which X doesn't like.
loadkeys
program.
NOTE: In RedHat 3.0.3, /usr/bin/loadkeys has too restrictive
access permissions, namely 700 (rwx------). There are no reasons
for that, since everyone may compile his own copy and execute it (the
appropriate system calls are not root-only). Thus, just ask your
sysadmin to set more reasonable permissions for it (for example, 755).
The following is an excerpt from my cyrload script, which sets
up the Cyrillic mode for Linux console:
if [ notset.$DISPLAY != notset. ]; then
echo "`basename $0`: cannot run under X"
exit
fi
loadkeys /usr/lib/kbd/keytables/ru.map
setfont /usr/lib/kbd/consolefonts/koi-8x16
echo "Use the right Ctrl key to switch the mode..."
Now you probably want to test it. Do the appropriate bash or tcsh
setup, rerun it, then press the right Control key and make sure
you are getting the cyrillic characters right. The 'q' key must
produce russian "short i" character, 'w' generates
"ts", etc.
If you've screwed something up, the very best thing to do is to reset to the original (that is, US) settings. Execute the following commands:
loadkeys /usr/lib/kbd/keytables/defkeymap.map setfont /usr/lib/kbd/consolefonts/default8x16
NOTE: unfortunately enough, the console driver is not able to preserve it's state (at least easily enough), while running the X Window System. Therefore, after you leave the X (or switch from it to a console), you have to reload the console russian font.
I am not using FreeBSD so I couldn't test the following information. All data in this section should be treated as just pointers to begin with. The FreeBSD project homepage may have some information on the subject. Another good source is the relcom.fido.ru.unix newsgroup. Also, check the resources listed in section resources.
Anyway, this is what Ilya K. Orehov suggests to do in order to make FreeBSD console speak Russian:
/etc/sysconfig add:
keymap=ru.koi8-r keyrate=fast # NOTE: '^[' below is a single control character keychange="61 ^[[K" cursor=destructive scrnmap=koi8-r2cp866 font8x16=cp866b-8x16 font8x14=cp866-8x14 font8x8=cp866-8x8
/etc/csh.login:
setenv ENABLE_STARTUP_LOCALE setenv LANG ru_SU.KOI8-R setenv LESSCHARSET latin1
/etc/profile