Broken unicode console about grml-autoconfig

[jkirk]

Confirmed.

Running unicode_start manually is my current workaround:

[mika]

The solution seems to be to ship a custom /etc/default/console-setup with CHARMAP=UTF-8 and something like ACTIVE_CONSOLES="/dev/tty[1-12]" (later one to be confirmed).

Then execute something like:

echo 'console-setup console-setup/charmap47 select UTF-8' | debconf-set-selections
DEBIAN_FRONTEND='noninteractive' dpkg-reconfigure console-setup

in the boot sequence. We should/need to rework the config_language within grml-autoconfig.functions.

[mika]

Ok, this is getting more and more interesting, the current daily ISOs (as well as self-built ones) no longer suffer from this issue. Still unsure what exactly fixed this for us, but closing the issue unless we see this happening again.

[jkirk]

You are right. In Grml 2018.12-rc1 I did the following after the boot process:

root@grml ~ # sed -i -e "s|^ *CHARMAP=.*|CHARMAP=\"UTF-8\"|" /etc/default/console-setup
root@grml ~ # systemctl restart console-setup.service

This fixed the Unicode problem on the TTYs 1-6 (because ACTIVE_CONSOLES was still "/dev/tty[1-6]") BUT: this seems to change to console font too.

And just for the record: I tried your debconf-set-selections-suggestion but this did not update /etc/default/console-setup:

root@grml ~ # echo 'console-setup console-setup/charmap47 select UTF-8' | debconf-set-selections              
root@grml ~ # debconf-get-selections| grep console-setup                                                
console-setup	console-setup/codesetcode	string	guess
console-setup	console-setup/charmap47	select	UTF-8
console-setup	console-setup/fontsize	string	8x16
console-setup	console-setup/codeset47	select	Guess optimal character set
console-setup	console-setup/fontsize-fb47	select	8x16
console-setup	console-setup/store_defaults_in_debconf_db	boolean	true
console-setup	console-setup/fontface47	select	Fixed
console-setup	console-setup/fontsize-text47	select	8x16
root@grml ~ # DEBIAN_FRONTEND='noninteractive' dpkg-reconfigure console-setup                                 
root@grml ~ # debconf-get-selections| grep console-setup                     
console-setup	console-setup/codeset47	select	Guess optimal character set
console-setup	console-setup/codesetcode	string	guess
console-setup	console-setup/charmap47	select	ISO-8859-15
console-setup	console-setup/fontsize	string	8x16
console-setup	console-setup/store_defaults_in_debconf_db	boolean	true
console-setup	console-setup/fontsize-fb47	select	8x16
console-setup	console-setup/fontface47	select	Fixed
console-setup	console-setup/fontsize-text47	select	8x16
root@grml ~ # cat /etc/default/console-setup 
# CONFIGURATION FILE FOR SETUPCON

# Consult the console-setup(5) manual page.

ACTIVE_CONSOLES="/dev/tty[1-6]"

CHARMAP="ISO-8859-15"

CODESET="guess"
FONTFACE="Fixed"
FONTSIZE="8x16"

VIDEOMODE=

# The following is an example how to use a braille font
# FONT='lat9w-08.psf.gz brl-8x8.psf'

(Not sure why it did not work, but it took me some while to figure that out, because running dpkg-reconfigure console-setup DID update the config file.)