1and1 dedicated server: change German language to English

27 February, 2007 at 10:54 am by Phil Wiffen · Filed under Linux

Our 64-bit 1and1 Dedicated Server shipped with German as the default language on the CLI. Dead handy when you’re trying to troubleshoot…

See the comments section for a much more elegant solution to this problem.

I thought I’d found a solution by changing the Bash language but it broke some stuff (including yum) so I went back to the default and put up with it. By chance, whilst browsing around atomicrocketturtle.com, I found Scott had fixed the same problem far more elegantly:

Here a quick step-by-step guide for FC4, on the 64-bit systems:

  1. Login as root (or su)
  2. Backup your yum.conf file: cp /etc/yum.conf /etc/yum.conf.YYYY-MM-DD
  3. Edit your /etc/yum.conf file
  4. Comment out the entries in your yum.conf which feature ‘update.onlinehome-server.info’. That server doesn’t work right now, and by commenting them out, yum will resort to the defaults in /etc/yum.repo.d
  5. Save yum.conf
  6. Run: yum install system-config-language
  7. You’ll be asked to confirm. Now, let it install…
  8. To change the language, run this from the command line: system-config-language
  9. Scroll up and choose English (British) (or whatever language you want).
  10. Hit the Tab key to switch to “OK”
  11. Hit return.
  12. Ta-da, English language feedback :)

For reference, your yum.conf should look something like this: yum.conf.txt

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5 Comments »

  1. Change default language in bash « Mind Circus said,

    27 February, 2007 at 10:59 am

    [...] This doesn’t work properly (it breaks some stuff), but I’ve written up a much more elegant solution from ART which does actually [...]

  2. Kieran Jones said,

    27 February, 2007 at 10:20 pm

    I called 1&1 and a guy phoned me back to say to do this and it will all be fixed, and he wasn’t lying either! You solution seems to be a very complex way of doing it…

    Vi the following file:

    /etc/sysconfig/i18n

    Make sure the file reads:

    LANG=”en_GB.UTF-8″
    SYSFONT=”latarcyrheb-sun16″

    OR

    LANG=”en_US.UTF-8″
    SYSFONT=”latarcyrheb-sun16″

  3. Jeremy said,

    2 March, 2007 at 10:54 pm

    I am having similar problems with my 1and1 server.

    I don’t have a yum.repo.d file.

    Can you send me yours or tell me what repositories you are using?

    I can’t connect to the 1and1 backup servers either – can you give me any hints on what you did to get that working?

    I need the kernel source files – any idea where I can find those?

    Thanks a million!

  4. Spencer said,

    8 March, 2007 at 6:46 am

    I also have the same problem and no yum.repo.d
    Is there some place to get this file and add it to the server?

  5. Phil Wiffen said,

    8 March, 2007 at 9:19 am

    Jeremy, Spencer:

    yum.repo.d isn’t a file, it’s a directory. I don’t know why you don’t have it. Perhaps you guys have something other than a 64-bit Businesss Root server from 1and1?

    Check out the instructions that Kieran gives above. That’ll solve your problem without my long-winded solution :)

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