[gentoo-user] /etc/locale vs /etc/env.d/02locale?

[gentoo-user] /etc/locale vs /etc/env.d/02locale?

[Mark Knecht]

Is there a simple explanation concerning the difference between the
two locales I have seen on Gentoo machines?

1) /etc/locale, as specified in the installation documents

2) /etc/env.d/02locale as has been discussed on the list recently

I'm helping a Windows friend bring up his first Gentoo box. With the
locale set in /etc/locale as per the install docs the locale command
returns: (from the chroot)

(chroot) livecd linux # cat /etc/locale.gen
<SNIP>
en_US ISO-8859-1
en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8
(chroot) livecd linux # locale
LANG=
LC_CTYPE="POSIX"
LC_NUMERIC="POSIX"
LC_TIME="POSIX"
LC_COLLATE="POSIX"
LC_MONETARY="POSIX"
LC_MESSAGES="POSIX"
LC_PAPER="POSIX"
LC_NAME="POSIX"
LC_ADDRESS="POSIX"
LC_TELEPHONE="POSIX"
LC_MEASUREMENT="POSIX"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="POSIX"
LC_ALL=
(chroot) livecd linux #


However on my machines it did the same thing until I set 02locale and
now it returns:

mark@c2stable ~ $ locale
LANG=en_US.UTF8
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF8"
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF8"
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF8"
LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF8"
LC_PAPER="en_US.UTF8"
LC_NAME="en_US.UTF8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US.UTF8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.UTF8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US.UTF8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.UTF8"
LC_ALL=
mark@c2stable ~ $

It seems to me the latter is preferable but the install docs don't
talk about it at all.

Thanks,
Mark

[gentoo-user] Re: /etc/locale vs /etc/env.d/02locale?

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 06/16/2011 06:45 PM, Mark Knecht wrote:
> Is there a simple explanation concerning the difference between the
> two locales I have seen on Gentoo machines?
>
> 1) /etc/locale, as specified in the installation documents
>
> 2) /etc/env.d/02locale as has been discussed on the list recently

There is no /etc/locale.  I assume you mean /etc/locale.gen.  That one 
only contains the locales for glibc.  You should not specify env vars 
there.  You only list raw locales.  Mine for example has these contents:

   en_US ISO-8859-1
   en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8

/etc/env.d/02locale is of a different format.  It's executed as a 
script, so you set your locale-specific env vars there.  You only need 
LANG actually, and possibly LC_COLLATE.  The whole contents of mine:

   LANG="en_US.UTF-8"
   LC_COLLATE="C"

Re: [gentoo-user] /etc/locale vs /etc/env.d/02locale?

[Mark Knecht]

On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 9:00 AM, Paul Hartman
<paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 10:45 AM, Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Is there a simple explanation concerning the difference between the
>> two locales I have seen on Gentoo machines?
>>
>> 1) /etc/locale, as specified in the installation documents
>>
>> 2) /etc/env.d/02locale as has been discussed on the list recently
>
> I'm not near a Gentoo machine right now, but off the top of my head IIRC:
>
> /etc/locale.gen contains a list of locales to be compiled when glibc
> is emerged. These will be available to be used.
>
> /etc/env.d/02locale specifies which of those locales you actually want
> to use for the system-wide default (the LC variables)

Thanks for the response Paul.

Does that mean that the /etc/locale.gen is used only by glibc and not
really by the system? If so, what is glibc doing with these beyond
letting me system run programs?

If 02locale specifies what the system is using, then should it be
02locale that's in the install documents vs off in an optional Gentoo
Localization guide?

Note that the /etc/locale.gen stuff is marked optional in the guide so
presumably it isn't actually needed. All I've determined about it is
that it reduces the amount of time emerge spends buildingglibc/gcc.

Thanks,
Mark

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: /etc/locale vs /etc/env.d/02locale?

[Mark Knecht]

On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 9:22 AM, Nikos Chantziaras <realnc@arcor.de> wrote:
> On 06/16/2011 06:45 PM, Mark Knecht wrote:
>>
>> Is there a simple explanation concerning the difference between the
>> two locales I have seen on Gentoo machines?
>>
>> 1) /etc/locale, as specified in the installation documents
>>
>> 2) /etc/env.d/02locale as has been discussed on the list recently
>
> There is no /etc/locale.  I assume you mean /etc/locale.gen.

I did. thanks.

> That one only
> contains the locales for glibc.  You should not specify env vars there.  You
> only list raw locales.  Mine for example has these contents:
>
>  en_US ISO-8859-1
>  en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8
>

As does mine.


> /etc/env.d/02locale is of a different format.  It's executed as a script, so
> you set your locale-specific env vars there.  You only need LANG actually,
> and possibly LC_COLLATE.  The whole contents of mine:
>
>  LANG="en_US.UTF-8"
>  LC_COLLATE="C"
>

I had the first line but not the second which I've added.

I think the root of my question is really the (possibly) unfortunately
use of the word 'locale' for the glibc stuff. I understand the concept
of locales for the system and users, but why does glibc need locales
which are possibly different from those in use on a system by users?

I can make up reasons, like someone from Japan logs into my server to
do work and needs something to use Japanese locales, but he could
likely set those up in .bashrc or something. What is glibc doing with
them?

Thanks,
Mark

[gentoo-user] Re: /etc/locale vs /etc/env.d/02locale?

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 06/16/2011 07:23 PM, Mark Knecht wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 9:00 AM, Paul Hartman
> <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com>  wrote:
>> On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 10:45 AM, Mark Knecht<markknecht@gmail.com>  wrote:
>>> Is there a simple explanation concerning the difference between the
>>> two locales I have seen on Gentoo machines?
>>>
>>> 1) /etc/locale, as specified in the installation documents
>>>
>>> 2) /etc/env.d/02locale as has been discussed on the list recently
>>
>> I'm not near a Gentoo machine right now, but off the top of my head IIRC:
>>
>> /etc/locale.gen contains a list of locales to be compiled when glibc
>> is emerged. These will be available to be used.
>>
>> /etc/env.d/02locale specifies which of those locales you actually want
>> to use for the system-wide default (the LC variables)
>
> Thanks for the response Paul.
>
> Does that mean that the /etc/locale.gen is used only by glibc and not
> really by the system? If so, what is glibc doing with these beyond
> letting me system run programs?

It allows you to have locales to use in /etc/env.d/02locale ;-)  If you 
want to set LANG=en_US.UTF-8 in 02locale, you of course need the files 
for that specific locale/encoding.  To get them, you need to write 
"en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8" in locale.gen.  Not sure why you're not getting the 
comments in your locale.gen, but here there are, at the top of the file:

# /etc/locale.gen: list all of the locales you want to have on your system
#
# The format of each line:
# <locale> <charmap>
#
# Where <locale> is a locale located in /usr/share/i18n/locales/ and
# where <charmap> is a charmap located in /usr/share/i18n/charmaps/.
#
# All blank lines and lines starting with # are ignored.
#
# For the default list of supported combinations, see the file:
# /usr/share/i18n/SUPPORTED
#
# Whenever glibc is emerged, the locales listed here will be automatically
# rebuilt for you.  After updating this file, you can simply run 
`locale-gen`
# yourself instead of re-emerging glibc.

[gentoo-user] Re: /etc/locale vs /etc/env.d/02locale?

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 06/16/2011 07:45 PM, Mark Knecht wrote:
> I think the root of my question is really the (possibly) unfortunately
> use of the word 'locale' for the glibc stuff.

locale.gen looks a bit cryptic, but the "gen" refers to generating 
locales.  To have locales available for use, they need to be generated 
first.

Re: [gentoo-user] /etc/locale vs /etc/env.d/02locale?

[YoYo Siska]

On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 09:23:16AM -0700, Mark Knecht wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 9:00 AM, Paul Hartman
> <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 10:45 AM, Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Is there a simple explanation concerning the difference between the
> >> two locales I have seen on Gentoo machines?
> >>
> >> 1) /etc/locale, as specified in the installation documents
> >>
> >> 2) /etc/env.d/02locale as has been discussed on the list recently
> >
> > I'm not near a Gentoo machine right now, but off the top of my head IIRC:
> >
> > /etc/locale.gen contains a list of locales to be compiled when glibc
> > is emerged. These will be available to be used.
> >
> > /etc/env.d/02locale specifies which of those locales you actually want
> > to use for the system-wide default (the LC variables)
> 
> Thanks for the response Paul.
> 
> Does that mean that the /etc/locale.gen is used only by glibc and not
> really by the system? If so, what is glibc doing with these beyond
> letting me system run programs?
> 
> If 02locale specifies what the system is using, then should it be
> 02locale that's in the install documents vs off in an optional Gentoo
> Localization guide?
> 
> Note that the /etc/locale.gen stuff is marked optional in the guide so
> presumably it isn't actually needed. All I've determined about it is
> that it reduces the amount of time emerge spends buildingglibc/gcc.

locale.gen is in the install docs, because it allows you to choose which
locales should be built, ie after emerging libc, which locales you can
choose from... if you don't modify it, you get a lot of usual locales
built...

/etc/env.d/02locale is used to actually choose which one of the built
ones will be used as the "default" locale for (almost) everything that
runs... I gues it might deserve a mention in the install guide... 
though it actullly isn't any special file... the actuall locale is set
by setting an enviroment variable (LANG or the specific LC_...), you
could set it in your .bashrc / .bash_profile only for your user, or
anywhere where it would apply to most programs, ie /etc/profile ...
Gentoo has the mechanism, that anything that gets put into /etc/env.d is
then (through env-update, which you have certainly run from time to time
;) merged together to /etc/profile.env, which is in turned sourced by
/etc/profile (and posibly other things) so that it is just logical to
put it there... but the actual name of the file doesn't really matter ;)


yoyo

[gentoo-user] Re: /etc/locale vs /etc/env.d/02locale?

[walt]

On 06/16/2011 12:00 PM, Paul Hartman wrote:
> On my personal
> system, I only install the US-English locales because I know I'm never
> going to use any of the others.

Me too -- or maybe I should say "moi aussi".

I've tried to prevent the installation of many many unneeded megabytes
of translation files in /usr/share/locale/* but I've never succeeded.
ATM I have 101MB of *.mo translation files in /usr/share/locale even
though I deleted all of them less than a month ago.

I unset the 'nls' useflag in the hope it would solve the problem, but
no joy.

#env | grep L.NG
LINGUAS=
ALL_LINGUAS=
LANG=en_US.UTF8
LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF8

#locale
LANG=en_US.UTF8
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF8"
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF8"
LC_COLLATE=C
LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF8"
LC_PAPER="en_US.UTF8"
LC_NAME="en_US.UTF8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US.UTF8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.UTF8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US.UTF8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.UTF8"
LC_ALL=

Please apply cluestick with vigor...

Thanks.

[gentoo-user] Re: /etc/locale vs /etc/env.d/02locale?

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 06/18/2011 03:50 AM, walt wrote:
> On 06/16/2011 12:00 PM, Paul Hartman wrote:
>> On my personal
>> system, I only install the US-English locales because I know I'm never
>> going to use any of the others.
>
> Me too -- or maybe I should say "moi aussi".
>
> I've tried to prevent the installation of many many unneeded megabytes
> of translation files in /usr/share/locale/* but I've never succeeded.
> ATM I have 101MB of *.mo translation files in /usr/share/locale even
> though I deleted all of them less than a month ago.
>
> I unset the 'nls' useflag in the hope it would solve the problem, but
> no joy.

Unfortunately, many ebuilds go ahead and install translation files 
anyway.  Developers seem to ignore this if a package only installs one 
or two additional files.  For example, see this patch I submitted once:

   http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=275980

It's not the end of the world, but I guess what the devs are missing is 
that one file here, one there, it adds up in the end.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: /etc/locale vs /etc/env.d/02locale?

[Peter Humphrey]

On Saturday 18 June 2011 01:50:12 walt wrote:

> I've tried to prevent the installation of many many unneeded megabytes
> of translation files in /usr/share/locale/* but I've never succeeded.
> ATM I have 101MB of *.mo translation files in /usr/share/locale even
> though I deleted all of them less than a month ago.
> 
> I unset the 'nls' useflag in the hope it would solve the problem, but
> no joy.

Have you tried localepurge?

-- 
Rgds
Peter

[gentoo-user] Re: /etc/locale vs /etc/env.d/02locale?

[walt]

On 06/17/2011 06:46 PM, Peter Humphrey wrote:
> On Saturday 18 June 2011 01:50:12 walt wrote:
> 
>> I've tried to prevent the installation of many many unneeded megabytes
>> of translation files in /usr/share/locale/* but I've never succeeded.

> Have you tried localepurge?

I just did, and thanks for the hint :)
 

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: /etc/locale vs /etc/env.d/02locale?

[Walter Dnes]

On Sat, Jun 18, 2011 at 02:46:45AM +0100, Peter Humphrey wrote

> Have you tried localepurge?

  A couple of notes/questions...

1) localepurge deletes the contents of subfolders in /usr/share/locale
but leaves the empty subfolders present.  Is it OK to delete the empty
subfolders?

2) I notice that localepurge did *NOT* delete the contents of
LC_MESSAGES in the following subfolders...
ast
be@latin
ca@valencia
crh
dz
en@shaw
io
kg
km
lg
mai
mg
my
nds
si
sr@latin
uz@cyrillic


-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: /etc/locale vs /etc/env.d/02locale?

[Peter Humphrey]

On Sunday 19 June 2011 21:46:05 Walter Dnes wrote:
> 1) localepurge deletes the contents of subfolders in /usr/share/locale
> but leaves the empty subfolders present.  Is it OK to delete the empty
> subfolders?

I assume so, though I haven't bothered. Why not try it and see?

> 2) I notice that localepurge did *NOT* delete the contents of
> LC_MESSAGES in the following subfolders...
> ast
> be@latin
> ca@valencia
> crh
> dz
> en@shaw
> io
> kg
> km
> lg
> mai
> mg
> my
> nds
> si
> sr@latin
> uz@cyrillic

Those don't look like locale names to me: uz@cyrillic? What locale is that? 
Or en@shaw? Who is shaw? Those two at least don't exist on my system.

-- 
Rgds
Peter