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When I use the VT (CTRL+ALT+F1),it will only display replacement characters for chinese, but from the alternative installation CD I can see, that it's actually possible to display chinese in the VT. How to enable this?

Braiam
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FUZxxl
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  • I booted into a chinese livecd. I hit ctl-alt-f1 to get to the console, and found it **did not display chinese characters**. I'm using a 10.10 ubuntu desktop iso. I had to install and run fbiterm to get the console to show chinese. Is your experience different? How so? – djeikyb Feb 12 '11 at 01:36
  • Also, when you installed ubuntu, did you install in english, or chinese? Please run `locale` and add it's output to your question. – djeikyb Feb 12 '11 at 05:43
  • I installed the german version of ubuntu. locale days `de_DE.utf8` everywhere. – FUZxxl Feb 12 '11 at 22:04

2 Answers2

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I booted the 10.10 32-bit Ubuntu livecd, and chose what I'm pretty sure is simplified chinese (second to last option on the language menu). After it booted into the trial environment, I hit ctl-alt-f1, typed ls, and was rewarded with diamonds instead of chinese. I conclude Ubuntu does not include chinese support for console/tty. Otoh, everything works wonderfully inside Gnome.

Fortunately, you can add chinese tty support. Install fbiterm and run it on a tty. It's a frame buffer that can deal with non-latin characters. I don't know yet how to make fbiterm used by default.

@FUZxxl, running fbiterm on a fresh install of Ubuntu 10.10 in VirtualBox gives me your error Frame buffer device /dev/fb0: Open error. I found an UbuntuForum.org thread that suggests you need to load the kernel module that allows frame buffers. It's a bit old..here's what I did:

  1. Edit /etc/initramfs-tools/modules. Add to the end of the file on separate lines: fbcon and vesafb.

  2. Edit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-framebuffer and uncomment vesafb.

  3. Run: sudo update-initramfs -u -k all.

  4. Make sure you have a vga line set in /etc/default/grub. Example: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="vga=0x314"

  5. Run update-grub.

Now you can reboot and run fbiterm at the virtual console.

djeikyb
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  • Thank you very much for this answer. To you know, which solution is used by the ubuntu alternate installer? – FUZxxl Feb 10 '11 at 18:57
  • Hm... Very bad. They all don't work on my machine. Maybe it's an issue with the nvidia driver. – FUZxxl Feb 11 '11 at 06:29
  • First, the screen goes black. – FUZxxl Feb 12 '11 at 18:05
  • Than nothing happens. If you change to another VT and back, there appears another message: Frame buffer device /dev/fb0: Open error. I guess it's something about the nVidia driver (as always...) – FUZxxl Feb 12 '11 at 19:04
  • I wouldn't give up yet. I reproduced the error without using an nvidia gfx driver. – djeikyb Feb 13 '11 at 09:45
  • I tried all your steps, but nothing happens. Still the same problem. I'm depressed. – FUZxxl Feb 13 '11 at 12:29
  • I tried your tutorial, but still nothing changes. What am I doing wrong??? – FUZxxl Feb 13 '11 at 15:29
  • OK. Thanks for all the help. I'm going to assign this bounty to you now, as I have no time tomorrow. I'm very sad it doesn't works on my machine. – FUZxxl Feb 15 '11 at 17:49
  • I'm still trying to think why it wouldn't work for you. All I can come up with is maybe you don't have framebuffer support in your kernel. But you would've had to manually accomplish this, and I assume you're running a stock Ubuntu kernel? – djeikyb Feb 15 '11 at 20:28
  • @djeikyb: Sorry for the delay. I had to do some other things in the meanwhile. Yes, it's the ubuntu tock kernel. `uname -r` says *2.6.35-28-generic*. – FUZxxl Mar 05 '11 at 10:26
  • The problem is that VT cannot display chinese characters but still insist using a zh locale. Why not falling back to en locale automatically? It's really not about framebuffer, it's about the designed's rotted mind. – funicorn Dec 29 '17 at 03:04
  • Just one note, I have to install `fbterm` rather than `fbiterm`. Probably a typo? – dibery Apr 07 '22 at 03:09
  • @dibery i believe it's an abbreviation pronounced Frame Buffered Internationalized Terminal. But I do hope that by now unicode is supported by default instead of requiring esoteric packages. – djeikyb Apr 07 '22 at 18:20
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I think, true "text mode" VT uses text video mode, so it's limited to 256/512 different chars at the same time. I don't know too much about the Chinese language, but I guess it has much more "letters" that other languages having an "alphabet" with 26 letters or so :) Though, I think Ubuntu uses framebuffer VT console (not text VGA mode based), so maybe in theory it's possible to do ...

LGB
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  • Do you know Clonezilla? If you start it, it will ask you for language settings. For instance, it will say 正體中文. As you can clearly see, clonezilla uses something VT-alike, so it couldn't be that difficult. – FUZxxl Feb 12 '11 at 18:02
  • Looking at `ps -e|grep fb`, `/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-framebuffer.conf`, and `lsmod|grep fb`, Ubuntu does **not** use a framebuffer. Confirmed with 10.04 and 10.10. – djeikyb Feb 13 '11 at 04:19