Hello Christian,
On Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 10:27:17AM +0200, Christian Perrier wrote:
> Quoting Helge Kreutzmann (debian@helgefjell.de):
> > Package: debian-installer
> > Severity: wishlist
> > Tags: l10n
> >
> > When you enter umlauts or other 8bit characters in the login prompt,
> > strange effects may appear. This can be avoided by setting a parameter
> > in /etc/inittab. See #221290 for the grory details, especially message #229.
> >
> > http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=221290#229
> >
> > Please reassign if this file (i.e. its default version) is not handled by d-i but
> > by some other program.
>
> Sad that you didn't paste the duggestion from that bug report as.....I
> could have loooked deeper while travelling (without net access).
Here it is:
At last I discovered that bug report :) I indeed noticed the strange
behavior and was never able to reproduce it reliably. So now it's done,
and now I understand.
This is not a bug, this is a feature: as said in manual, getty detects
tty parity and control characters, which is quite nice in many
situations, but not 8bit ones. Here, the umlauted letter you type is
considered as a 7bit character with a 8th bit parity. The 7 lower bits
are then interpreted (wrong).
So detection is really not reliable in 8bit environments (be it utf-8 or
not). What I suggest then is the attached patch: just adding a -8
option that makes agetty assume that the tty is 8bits and hence disable
parity detection. Adding that option in /etc/inittab for new installs
should then be fine:
1:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty -8 38400 tty1
etc.
Note: with this patch, 8bit characters are just silently dropped (that's
the expected getty behavior), this is quite neat since you then don't
even need to backspace your 8bit characters :)
> Anyway, that very certainly belongs to finish-install where we doo all
> such magic about inittab.
Thanks for reassigning.
Greetings
Helge
--
Dr. Helge Kreutzmann debian@helgefjell.de
Dipl.-Phys. http://www.helgefjell.de/debian.php
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