Chapter 2. System Locale and Keyboard Configuration

The system locale specifies the language settings of system services and user interfaces. The keyboard layout settings control the layout used on the text console and graphical user interfaces.
These settings can be made by modifying the /etc/locale.conf configuration file or by using the localectl utility. Also, you can use the graphical user interface to perform the task; for a description of this method, see Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Installation Guide.

2.1. Setting the System Locale

System-wide locale settings are stored in the /etc/locale.conf file, which is read at early boot by the systemd daemon. The locale settings configured in /etc/locale.conf are inherited by every service or user, unless individual programs or individual users override them.
The basic file format of /etc/locale.conf is a newline-separated list of variable assignments. For example, German locale with English messages in /etc/locale.conf looks as follows: 
LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_MESSAGES=C
Here, the LC_MESSAGES option determines the locale used for diagnostic messages written to the standard error output. To further specify locale settings in /etc/locale.conf, you can use several other options, the most relevant are summarized in Table 2.1, “Options configurable in /etc/locale.conf”. See the locale(7) manual page for detailed information on these options. Note that the LC_ALL option, which represents all possible options, should not be configured in /etc/locale.conf.

Table 2.1. Options configurable in /etc/locale.conf

OptionDescription
LANG Provides a default value for the system locale.
LC_COLLATE Changes the behavior of functions which compare strings in the local alphabet.
LC_CTYPE Changes the behavior of the character handling and classification functions and the multibyte character functions.
LC_NUMERIC Describes the way numbers are usually printed, with details such as decimal point versus decimal comma.
LC_TIME Changes the display of the current time, 24-hour versus 12-hour clock.
LC_MESSAGES Determines the locale used for diagnostic messages written to the standard error output.

2.1.1. Displaying the Current Status

The localectl command can be used to query and change the system locale and keyboard layout settings. To show the current settings, use the status option: 
localectl status

Example 2.1. Displaying the Current Status

The output of the previous command lists the currently set locale, keyboard layout configured for the console and for the X11 window system. 
~]$ localectl status
   System Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8
       VC Keymap: us
      X11 Layout: n/a

2.1.2. Listing Available Locales

To list all locales available for your system, type: 
localectl list-locales

Example 2.2. Listing Locales

Imagine you want to select a specific English locale, but you are not sure if it is available on the system. You can check that by listing all English locales with the following command: 
~]$ localectl list-locales | grep en_
en_AG
en_AG.utf8
en_AU
en_AU.iso88591
en_AU.utf8
en_BW
en_BW.iso88591
en_BW.utf8

output truncated

2.1.3. Setting the Locale

To set the default system locale, use the following command as root: 
localectl set-locale LANG=locale
Replace locale with the locale name, found with the localectl list-locales command. The above syntax can also be used to configure parameters from Table 2.1, “Options configurable in /etc/locale.conf”.

Example 2.3. Changing the Default Locale

For example, if you want to set British English as your default locale, first find the name of this locale by using list-locales. Then, as root, type the command in the following form: 
~]# localectl set-locale LANG=en_GB.utf8

2.1.4. Making System Locale Settings Permanent when Installing with Kickstart

When Red Hat Enterprise Linux is installed with the Red Hat Kickstart installation method, setting of the system locales might not be persistent after an upgrade of the operating system.
When the %packages section of the Kickstart file includes the --instLang option, the _install_langs RPM macro is set to the particular value for this installation, and the set of installed locales is adjusted accordingly. However, this adjustment affects only this installation, not subsequent upgrades. If an upgrade reinstalls the glibc package, the entire set of locales is upgraded instead of only the locales you requested during the installation.
To avoid this, make the choice of locales permanent. You have these options:

Procedure 2.1. Setting RPM macros during the Kickstart installation

  • Modify the %post section of the Kickstart file: 
    LANG=en_US
echo "%_install_langs $LANG" > /etc/rpm/macros.language-conf

awk '(NF==0amp amp!done){print "override_install_langs='$LANG'";done=1}{print}' \
     < /etc/yum.conf > /etc/yum.conf.new
mv /ec/yum.conf.new /etc/yum.conf

Procedure 2.2. Setting RPM macros globally

  1. Create the RPM configuration file at /etc/rpm/macros.language-conf with the following contents: 
    %_install_langs LANG
    LANG is the value of the instLang option.
  2. Update the /etc/yum.conf file with: 
    override_install_langs=LANG