Strange letters and weird boxes around dialog boxes

timelaw · 2013-03-31 20:13:14

Hello!

I'm wondering what might cause something like this:

mkdir text
ls
text
rm text/
rm: cannot remove Ètext/È: Is a directory

The commands doesn't matter, just the end right there. The text looks weird and everything. It shows like this in other places as well but I just made this example up.

And if there is a dialog box it will have a line that consists of the same kind of letters, not a straight line.

How do I fix this?

jasonwryan · 2013-03-31 20:23:15

In all likelihood it is your locale. If that is set up correctly then the next culprit would be incorrect $TERM settings...

drcouzelis · 2013-03-31 20:25:45

What are your settings in "/etc/locale.conf" and "/etc/locale.gen"?

timelaw · 2013-03-31 22:18:07

drcouzelis wrote:

What are your settings in "/etc/locale.conf" and "/etc/locale.gen"?

locale.conf:

LANG=en_US.UTF-8

The only uncommented line in locale.gen is the one.

en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8

I used to have sv_SE.UTF-8 UTF-8 but undid that and regenerated the gen because it failed to show the proper letters anyway. Not showing local letters like åäöÅÄÖ properly, which was the whole point in having it.

drcouzelis · 2013-04-01 00:48:42

For the record, my locale.gen file is:

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

Also, for the record, I have no idea what's wrong with your computer.

jasonwryan · 2013-04-01 01:02:07

Does your terminal support UTF-8? Are you setting a $TERM in your shell files?

It would be helpful if you provided more information about your environment: DE/WM, shell, $TERM etc:
see How To Ask Questions The Smart Way

timelaw · 2013-04-03 10:02:05

jasonwryan wrote:

Does your terminal support UTF-8? Are you setting a $TERM in your shell files?
It would be helpful if you provided more information about your environment: DE/WM, shell, $TERM etc:
see How To Ask Questions The Smart Way

I have Arch installed on a notebook, Asus Eee Pc 1005HA. I haven't managed to get X.org to work either yet but that's fine I'll try to fix that later when I feel it urgent.

I am a total beginner with these things but I like learning so that's why I'm sticking to it although it's all going against me right now, so bare with me folks!

I don't know what you mean by DE/WM, but WM could mean virtual machine or something? If that's the case, then no. Otherwise I've got no clue.

I'm using bash. What is $TERM?

Haha I feel so stupid for asking these questions but you have to ask if you want to learn, right?

Also, I just noticed that my loadkeys layout is failed as well. It should be set to sv-latin1, which worked during installation and as far as I know, after reboot as well. But now for some reason it is some weird layout I can't figure out what it is. It has the german "double S" to the right of L, instead of Ö and the rest of the buttons are weird characters I can't type on this PC (I am on my Ubuntu)

Last edited by timelaw (2013-04-03 10:23:13)

kaszak696 · 2013-04-03 10:19:31

DE - Desktop Environment
WM - Window Manager

What is in your /etc/vconsole.conf?

timelaw · 2013-04-03 10:25:07

kaszak696 wrote:

DE - Desktop Environment
WM - Window Manager
What is in your /etc/vconsole.conf?

Ah, okey... I haven't got any yet. Haven't gotten X.org to work so i have no desktop nor window manager I suppose?

In my vconsole.conf:

KEYMAP=sv_latin1
FONT=Lat2-Terminus16

Trilby · 2013-04-03 10:38:36

Timelaw, being new and needing to learn is fine, but you will be expected to do some of your own research.

JWR linked to an article about how to ask questions in a manner that will yeild useful results. One of the underlying themes - and even one of the specific examples - describes someone being given advice on a forum when they are told to check the value of some setting (like, say, $TERM). The bad response described in that article is to immediately respond "What is TERM?".

We are here to help solve your problem, but we are not here to reiterate basic facts that could be found through a 5 second google search. Google "Linux TERM" or "WM DE" and I have no doubt the first results will tell you exactly what these are - then we can focus on solving the actual problem, rather than the trivialities which you are certainly capable of determining without help.

Please actually read the article JWR linked to. You can keep your eye out for the short example on a "stuck zentry" for the example I'm referring to.

Last edited by Trilby (2013-04-03 10:43:16)

timelaw · 2013-04-03 12:23:27

Trilby wrote:

Timelaw, being new and needing to learn is fine, but you will be expected to do some of your own research.
JWR linked to an article about how to ask questions in a manner that will yeild useful results. One of the underlying themes - and even one of the specific examples - describes someone being given advice on a forum when they are told to check the value of some setting (like, say, $TERM). The bad response described in that article is to immediately respond "What is TERM?".
We are here to help solve your problem, but we are not here to reiterate basic facts that could be found through a 5 second google search. Google "Linux TERM" or "WM DE" and I have no doubt the first results will tell you exactly what these are - then we can focus on solving the actual problem, rather than the trivialities which you are certainly capable of determining without help.
Please actually read the article JWR linked to. You can keep your eye out for the short example on a "stuck zentry" for the example I'm referring to.

I did google the DE and WM thing but I didn't found anything that related to the matter. I guess I did it with other keywords or something. (What I googled was "WM/DE means/meaning" etc)

I did check the link, and I have it here in a seperate tab, reading bits as I keep going. If it looked like I didn't care, that's not the case.

Also, when I wrote $TERM in the console it said
-bash: linux: command not found

And now when I have googled, it said that linux is the most common thing the variable is set to, in new systems etc, and I suppose that is why it says linux there?

Also, I'm quite busy with a lot of stuff and I'm trying to fix this issue with my Arch when I have spare time, and so I wrote this in the hope that I could get it explained until I actually had time to look at this again.

I'm sorry for the trouble.

Last edited by timelaw (2013-04-03 12:24:09)

Trilby · 2013-04-03 12:30:54

No real trouble - I certainly don't mean to tell you to leave, only to give constructive criticism that should make your stay more pleasant and productive. It seems you took it well and are acting on it, so things should be productive.

Indeed "linux" is the appropriate setting for the TERM environment variable when you are in a tty. One would commonly check the value by a command like `echo $TERM` as the $ before TERM tells bash to expand TERM. So you type "$TERM" and bash reads that as "linux" and gives the error that "linux" is not a command. "echo $TERM" on the otherhand expands to "echo linux" in which case it just returns "linux". All this is just an aside, though. Your TERM variable does not seem to be the problem now.

drcouzelis · 2013-04-03 13:31:47

As an aside: The first result for a Google search for "linux wm definition" is the Arch Linux wiki.

Did you try changing your locale.gen file?

derhamster · 2013-04-03 14:55:30

I have no idea what the solution to your problem is. But could the filesystem cause this? Maybe it uses a different encoding than UTF8 to store filenames and the like?!

Edit: I should have read your post more carefully. `ls` prints out the name properly
Edit 2: Great, I just realized I have the same problem.. in urxvt, I get this:

rm: cannot remove ‘test’: Is a directory

while in a tty I get these filled block instead of ‘’. Like a placeholder for a symbol my font doesn't support. And indeed, when I use the Lat2-Terminus16 font, I gets displayed with an È.

Last edited by derhamster (2013-04-03 15:09:56)

timelaw · 2013-04-03 19:53:40

derhamster wrote:

I have no idea what the solution to your problem is. But could the filesystem cause this? Maybe it uses a different encoding than UTF8 to store filenames and the like?!
Edit: I should have read your post more carefully. `ls` prints out the name properly
Edit 2: Great, I just realized I have the same problem.. in urxvt, I get this:
rm: cannot remove ‘test’: Is a directory
while in a tty I get these filled block instead of ‘’. Like a placeholder for a symbol my font doesn't support. And indeed, when I use the Lat2-Terminus16 font, I gets displayed with an È.

So it could be the Lat2-Terminus16 then? I followed the Arch install wiki-tutorial and it had that as an example, can't remember if they said to use it or not, but I didn't think it would hurt. Should I try to change it to something else?

drcouzelis wrote:

As an aside: The first result for a Google search for "linux wm definition" is the Arch Linux wiki.
Did you try changing your locale.gen file?

I have tried to change the locale.gen and such a couple of times and I've tried to change the layout of the keyboard as well. If you get this with that font I could try to change the font then?

Last edited by timelaw (2013-04-03 19:55:40)

sano · 2013-04-07 00:52:03

I stumbled upon this thread, repeated the steps of the OP in a tty and it seems I am also affected.

locale.gen:

en_GB.UTF-8 UTF-8  
en_GB ISO-8859-1

locale.conf:

LANG=en_GB.UTF-8

vconsole.conf:

KEYMAP=es

Anyone else?

ariens · 2013-04-16 14:09:50

I had the same problem on a number of Pi's running Arch Linux ARM , as well as an older laptop.

This post solved my problem:

http://archlinux.me/crouse/2011/01/26/t … r-console/

thisoldman · 2013-05-08 13:10:42

I had the same problem, single-quotes were replaced with '▗' with Arch's default console font, and with 'È' when I used I Lat2-Terminus16.

I think the problem is limited to nvidia drivers. For me, nvidia would default to 640x480 (VGA?) for grub and the console. I didn't like that, so I at first tried 1280x1024, my monitor's native resolution and what I use for X. The console had too many lines, so I switched to 1024x768 for grub and console while keeping 1280x1024 for X.

That solved the odd character problem, too! Later, I read that the trick was to have the console and the X server using different display resolutions.

I edited '/etc/default/grub' to include:

GRUB_GFXMODE=1024x768,auto
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=keep

And regenerated the changes with:

# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

After a reboot, everything works fine. The system does give a warning in the logs, but it's not an error:

kernel: NVRM: loading NVIDIA UNIX x86_64 Kernel Module  304.88  Wed Mar 27 14:26:46 PDT 2013
kernel: NVRM: Your system is not currently configured to drive a VGA console
kernel: NVRM: on the primary VGA device. The NVIDIA Linux graphics driver
kernel: NVRM: requires the use of a text-mode VGA console. Use of other console
kernel: NVRM: drivers including, but not limited to, vesafb, may result in
kernel: NVRM: corruption and stability problems, and is not supported.

Arch Linux

#1 2013-03-31 20:13:14

Strange letters and weird boxes around dialog boxes

#2 2013-03-31 20:23:15

Re: Strange letters and weird boxes around dialog boxes

#3 2013-03-31 20:25:45

Re: Strange letters and weird boxes around dialog boxes

#4 2013-03-31 22:18:07

Re: Strange letters and weird boxes around dialog boxes

#5 2013-04-01 00:48:42

Re: Strange letters and weird boxes around dialog boxes

#6 2013-04-01 01:02:07

Re: Strange letters and weird boxes around dialog boxes

#7 2013-04-03 10:02:05

Re: Strange letters and weird boxes around dialog boxes

#8 2013-04-03 10:19:31

Re: Strange letters and weird boxes around dialog boxes

#9 2013-04-03 10:25:07

Re: Strange letters and weird boxes around dialog boxes

#10 2013-04-03 10:38:36

Re: Strange letters and weird boxes around dialog boxes

#11 2013-04-03 12:23:27

Re: Strange letters and weird boxes around dialog boxes

#12 2013-04-03 12:30:54

Re: Strange letters and weird boxes around dialog boxes

#13 2013-04-03 13:31:47

Re: Strange letters and weird boxes around dialog boxes

#14 2013-04-03 14:55:30

Re: Strange letters and weird boxes around dialog boxes

#15 2013-04-03 19:53:40

Re: Strange letters and weird boxes around dialog boxes

#16 2013-04-07 00:52:03

Re: Strange letters and weird boxes around dialog boxes

#17 2013-04-16 14:09:50

Re: Strange letters and weird boxes around dialog boxes

#18 2013-05-08 13:10:42

Re: Strange letters and weird boxes around dialog boxes

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