[b32e803] | 1 | <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
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[d781ffb] | 2 | <!DOCTYPE sect1 PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.4//EN"
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| 3 | "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.4/docbookx.dtd" [
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[b32e803] | 4 | <!ENTITY % general-entities SYSTEM "../general.ent">
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| 5 | %general-entities;
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| 6 | ]>
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[d781ffb] | 7 |
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[b32e803] | 8 | <sect1 id="ch-scripts-profile">
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[d781ffb] | 9 | <?dbhtml filename="profile.html"?>
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| 10 |
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| 11 | <title>The Bash Shell Startup Files</title>
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| 12 |
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| 13 | <indexterm zone="ch-scripts-profile">
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| 14 | <primary sortas="e-/etc/profile">/etc/profile</primary>
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| 15 | </indexterm>
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| 16 |
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| 17 | <para>The shell program <command>/bin/bash</command> (hereafter referred to
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| 18 | as <quote>the shell</quote>) uses a collection of startup files to help
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| 19 | create an environment to run in. Each file has a specific use and may affect
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| 20 | login and interactive environments differently. The files in the <filename
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| 21 | class="directory">/etc</filename> directory provide global settings. If an
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| 22 | equivalent file exists in the home directory, it may override the global
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| 23 | settings.</para>
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| 24 |
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| 25 | <para>An interactive login shell is started after a successful login, using
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| 26 | <command>/bin/login</command>, by reading the <filename>/etc/passwd</filename>
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| 27 | file. An interactive non-login shell is started at the command-line (e.g.,
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| 28 | <prompt>[prompt]$</prompt><command>/bin/bash</command>). A non-interactive
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| 29 | shell is usually present when a shell script is running. It is non-interactive
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| 30 | because it is processing a script and not waiting for user input between
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| 31 | commands.</para>
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| 32 |
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| 33 | <para>For more information, see <command>info bash</command> under the
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| 34 | <emphasis>Bash Startup Files and Interactive Shells</emphasis> section.</para>
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| 35 |
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| 36 | <para>The files <filename>/etc/profile</filename> and
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| 37 | <filename>~/.bash_profile</filename> are read when the shell is
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| 38 | invoked as an interactive login shell.</para>
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| 39 |
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| 40 | <para>The base <filename>/etc/profile</filename> below sets some
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| 41 | environment variables necessary for native language support. Setting
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| 42 | them properly results in:</para>
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| 43 |
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| 44 | <itemizedlist>
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| 45 | <listitem>
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| 46 | <para>The output of programs translated into the native language</para>
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| 47 | </listitem>
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| 48 | <listitem>
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| 49 | <para>Correct classification of characters into letters, digits and other
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| 50 | classes. This is necessary for <command>bash</command> to properly accept
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| 51 | non-ASCII characters in command lines in non-English locales</para>
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| 52 | </listitem>
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| 53 | <listitem>
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| 54 | <para>The correct alphabetical sorting order for the country</para>
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| 55 | </listitem>
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| 56 | <listitem>
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| 57 | <para>Appropriate default paper size</para>
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| 58 | </listitem>
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| 59 | <listitem>
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| 60 | <para>Correct formatting of monetary, time, and date values</para>
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| 61 | </listitem>
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| 62 | </itemizedlist>
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| 63 |
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| 64 | <para>This script also sets the <envar>INPUTRC</envar> environment variable that
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| 65 | makes Bash and Readline use the <filename>/etc/inputrc</filename> file created
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| 66 | earlier.</para>
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| 67 |
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| 68 | <para>Replace <replaceable>[ll]</replaceable> below with the two-letter code
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| 69 | for the desired language (e.g., <quote>en</quote>) and
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| 70 | <replaceable>[CC]</replaceable> with the two-letter code for the appropriate
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| 71 | country (e.g., <quote>GB</quote>). <replaceable>[charmap]</replaceable> should
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[fa21b3d] | 72 | be replaced with the canonical charmap for your chosen locale. Optional
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| 73 | modifiers such as <quote>@euro</quote> may also be present.</para>
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[d781ffb] | 74 |
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| 75 | <para>The list of all locales supported by Glibc can be obtained by running
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| 76 | the following command:</para>
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[81fd230] | 77 |
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[0ebe9fa4] | 78 | <screen role="nodump"><userinput>locale -a</userinput></screen>
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[81fd230] | 79 |
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[fa21b3d] | 80 | <para>Charmaps can have a number of aliases, e.g., <quote>ISO-8859-1</quote>
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[d781ffb] | 81 | is also referred to as <quote>iso8859-1</quote> and <quote>iso88591</quote>.
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[fa21b3d] | 82 | Some applications cannot handle the various synonyms correctly (e.g., require
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| 83 | that <quote>UTF-8</quote> is written as <quote>UTF-8</quote>, not
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| 84 | <quote>utf8</quote>), so it is safest in most
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| 85 | cases to choose the canonical name for a particular locale. To determine
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[d781ffb] | 86 | the canonical name, run the following command, where <replaceable>[locale
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| 87 | name]</replaceable> is the output given by <command>locale -a</command> for
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| 88 | your preferred locale (<quote>en_GB.iso88591</quote> in our example).</para>
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[768efb56] | 89 |
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[0ebe9fa4] | 90 | <screen role="nodump"><userinput>LC_ALL=<replaceable>[locale name]</replaceable> locale charmap</userinput></screen>
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[768efb56] | 91 |
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[d781ffb] | 92 | <para>For the <quote>en_GB.iso88591</quote> locale, the above command
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| 93 | will print:</para>
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[768efb56] | 94 |
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[d781ffb] | 95 | <screen><computeroutput>ISO-8859-1</computeroutput></screen>
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[768efb56] | 96 |
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[d781ffb] | 97 | <para>This results in a final locale setting of <quote>en_GB.ISO-8859-1</quote>.
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| 98 | It is important that the locale found using the heuristic above is tested prior
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| 99 | to it being added to the Bash startup files:</para>
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[c45b780] | 100 |
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[82aac74] | 101 | <screen role="nodump"><userinput>LC_ALL=[locale name] locale country
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[c45b780] | 102 | LC_ALL=[locale name] locale language
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| 103 | LC_ALL=[locale name] locale charmap
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| 104 | LC_ALL=[locale name] locale int_curr_symbol
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| 105 | LC_ALL=[locale name] locale int_prefix</userinput></screen>
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| 106 |
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[d781ffb] | 107 | <para>The above commands should print the country and language names, the
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| 108 | character encoding used by the locale, the local currency and the prefix to dial
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| 109 | before the telephone number in order to get into the country. If any of the
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| 110 | commands above fail with a message similar to the one shown below, this means
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| 111 | that your locale was either not installed in Chapter 6 or is not supported by
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| 112 | the default installation of Glibc.</para>
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[c45b780] | 113 |
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[ac1d807] | 114 | <screen><computeroutput>locale: Cannot set LC_* to default locale: No such file or directory</computeroutput></screen>
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[c45b780] | 115 |
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[d781ffb] | 116 | <para>If this happens, you should either install the desired locale using the
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| 117 | <command>localedef</command> command, or consider choosing a different locale.
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| 118 | Further instructions assume that there are no such error messages from
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| 119 | Glibc.</para>
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[c45b780] | 120 |
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[fa21b3d] | 121 | <!-- FIXME: the xlib example will became obsolete real soon -->
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[d781ffb] | 122 | <para>Some packages beyond LFS may also lack support for your chosen locale. One
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| 123 | example is the X library (part of the X Window System), which outputs the
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| 124 | following error message:</para>
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[c45b780] | 125 |
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[ac1d807] | 126 | <screen><computeroutput>Warning: locale not supported by Xlib, locale set to C</computeroutput></screen>
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[c45b780] | 127 |
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[d781ffb] | 128 | <para>Sometimes it is possible to fix this by removing the charmap part of the
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| 129 | locale specification, as long as that does not change the character map that
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| 130 | Glibc associates with the locale (this can be checked by running the
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| 131 | <command>locale charmap</command> command in both locales). For example, one
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| 132 | would have to change "de_DE.ISO-8859-15@euro" to
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| 133 | "de_DE@euro" in order to get this locale recognized by Xlib.</para>
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[c45b780] | 134 |
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[d781ffb] | 135 | <para>Other packages can also function incorrectly (but may not necessarily
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| 136 | display any error messages) if the locale name does not meet their expectations.
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| 137 | In those cases, investigating how other Linux distributions support your locale
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| 138 | might provide some useful information.</para>
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[768efb56] | 139 |
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[d781ffb] | 140 | <para>Once the proper locale settings have been determined, create the
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| 141 | <filename>/etc/profile</filename> file:</para>
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[f67f5cf] | 142 |
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[b32e803] | 143 | <screen><userinput>cat > /etc/profile << "EOF"
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[d72e04a] | 144 | <literal># Begin /etc/profile
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[b32e803] | 145 |
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[fa21b3d] | 146 | export LANG=<replaceable>[ll]</replaceable>_<replaceable>[CC]</replaceable>.<replaceable>[charmap]</replaceable><replaceable>[@modifiers]</replaceable>
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[b32e803] | 147 | export INPUTRC=/etc/inputrc
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| 148 |
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[d72e04a] | 149 | # End /etc/profile</literal>
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[b32e803] | 150 | EOF</userinput></screen>
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| 151 |
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[fa21b3d] | 152 | <para>The <quote>C</quote> (default) and <quote>en_US</quote> (the recommended
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| 153 | one for United States English users) locales are different. <quote>C</quote>
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| 154 | uses the US-ASCII 7-bit character set, and treats bytes with the high bit set
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| 155 | as invalid characters. That's why, e.g., the <command>ls</command> command
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| 156 | substitutes them with question marks in that locale. Also, an attempt to send
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| 157 | mail with such characters from Mutt or Pine results in non-RFC-conforming
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| 158 | messages being sent (the charset in the outgoing mail is indicated as <quote>unknown
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| 159 | 8-bit</quote>). So you can use the <quote>C</quote> locale only if you are sure that
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| 160 | you will never need 8-bit characters.</para>
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| 161 |
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| 162 | <para>UTF-8 based locales are not supported well by many programs. E.g., the
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| 163 | <command>watch</command> program displays only ASCII characters in UTF-8
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| 164 | locales and has no such restriction in traditional 8-bit locales like en_US.
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| 165 | Without patches and/or installing software beyond BLFS, in UTF-8 based locales
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| 166 | you will not be able to do such basic tasks as printing plain-text files from
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| 167 | the command line, recording Windows-readable CDs with filenames containing
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| 168 | non-ASCII characters, viewing ID3v1 tags in MP3 files and so on. Work is in
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| 169 | progress to document and, if possible, fix such problems, see
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| 170 | <ulink url="&blfs-root;view/svn/introduction/locale-issues.html"/>.
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| 171 | It is, however, safe to use UTF-8 based locales if you are going to use only
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| 172 | KDE or GNOME and never open the terminal.</para>
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| 173 | <!-- All abovementioned problems except "watch" have a known fix beyond BLFS -->
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[94aa6621] | 174 |
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[b32e803] | 175 | </sect1>
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