glibc Installed a lot of Locales.

LegionOfHell · Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2020 9:09 pm Post subject: glibc Installed a lot of Locales.

During the installation of Gentoo I un-commented en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8 in /etc/locale.gen and there were like two entries in there..

Along the way, I mistakenly emerged glibc : emerge glibc

now glibc is in /var/lib/portage/world file and when I try to update/upgrade my system I see these texts during compilation/installation of glibc: https://ibb.co/4Fr8vg5

and my /etc/locale.gen reads: https://pastebin.com/bL3n3BRd

Is this normal or should I do something about it ? is it reversible ?

i used this command to update my system:

emerge-webrsync
emerge --update --deep --with-bdeps=y --newuse @world

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2020 9:16 pm Post subject:

LegionOfHell,

/etc/locale.gen is now only comments, so glibc built all the locales.

emerge --deselect ...
will remove a package from world but not from your system. Removing glibc from your system is a verybadthing.

Edit your /etc/locale.gen to your taste then run

LegionOfHell · Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2020 9:30 pm Post subject:

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2020 9:37 pm Post subject:

LegionOfHell,

Nope. Portage does not do that. I suspect you got an update to /etc/locale.gen in etc-update and accepted it.
Its a CONFIG_PROTECT file.

You do not need to re-emerge glibc.

LegionOfHell · Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2020 9:46 pm Post subject:

I have

LegionOfHell · Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2020 10:05 pm Post subject:

I set CONFIG_PROTECT="-*" like a month ago, This explains why my /etc/locale.gen is modified. so yeah it was modified to have all locales commented out...which caused glibc to generate all the locales...Is there a way to delete all the bloats created by this ?

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sun Aug 23, 2020 8:41 am Post subject:

LegionOfHell,

CONFIG_PROTECT="-*" prevents portage warning about updates to configuration files in the protected locations. It just does them.
Yes, its a very bad thing. Portage will reset things like /etc/fstab, then your system won't boot.

Edit /etc/locale.gen
Run

LegionOfHell · Posted: Sun Aug 23, 2020 1:02 pm Post subject:

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sun Aug 23, 2020 1:10 pm Post subject:

LegionOfHell,

You can look back through /var/log/emerge.log and for every package since you changed CONFIG_PROTECT then run

LegionOfHell · Posted: Sun Aug 23, 2020 8:56 pm Post subject:

I could just skip going through /var/log/emerge.log and check each package for the files they installed...

As you say, only the files that I have modified matters..so i can check only them ...

Many Thanks

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sun Aug 23, 2020 9:31 pm Post subject:

LegionOfHell,

/var/log/emerge.log is a chronological list of emerge operations since your system was first installed.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

alamahant · Advocate Joined: 23 Mar 2019 Posts: 3879

I am not actually very clear about which locales I need...
Are locales only about the UI language..?
Is English just enough?
Or do i need more for browsers etc?
Are locales related to fonts?
For example lets say in libreoffice I neet to type I dont know lets say French Do i need the French locale also?
Or this is a font thing only?
Please kindly clarify this a bit my knowledgeable peers...
Thanks a lot..

mike155 · Posted: Sun Aug 23, 2020 11:10 pm Post subject:

So many questions!

The locales 'C', 'POSIX' and 'en_US.utf8' are strictly necessary.

You'll also need the locales you define with 'localectl' or in '/etc/env.d02locale' - if you use anything else than 'C', 'POSIX' or 'en_US.utf8'.

Think about the users of your machine. Which date format do they want to get displayed when they run 'date' or 'ls -la'? Add the required locales.

You maintain a server for students at an international university? Install all locales - because you don't know which locales the students will use

Browsers and LibreOffice use their own locale mechanism. You don't need to add the locale "fr_FR.utf8" if you want the French spell checker in LibreOffice.

Locales are not related to fonts. But if you want to get Chinese characters if you run 'LANG=zh_CN.utf8 date', you'll need a font that supports Chinese characters, of course.

alamahant · Advocate Joined: 23 Mar 2019 Posts: 3879

Thanks mike155,
I understand now that i did NOT know what locales are....
It seems I never had an interest to know more......
I dismissed the whole "locale" as something uninteresting and dull.
My mistake.......

LegionOfHell · Posted: Wed Aug 26, 2020 12:09 am Post subject:

Doplerr · n00b Joined: 26 Aug 2020 Posts: 1

That will give you a rundown of records that have been introduced while CONFIG_PROTECT was off.

Its solitary records that you have physically changed that issue, as/and so on/fstab,/and so forth/areas, all the things in/and so on/conf.d/and a couple of different spots.

Just you realize what you have changed.