Chapter 4. Changing basic environment settings
Chapter 4. Changing basic environment settings Configuration of basic environment settings is a part of the installation process. The following sections guide you when you change them later. The basic configuration of the environment includes: Date and time System locales Keyboard layout Language 4.1. Configuring the date and time Accurate timekeeping is important for several reasons. In Red Hat Enterprise Linux, timekeeping is ensured by the NTP protocol, which is implemented by a daemon running in user space. The user-space daemon updates the system clock running in the kernel. The system clock can keep time by using various clock sources. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 uses the chronyd daemon to implement NTP . chronyd is available from the chrony package. For more information, see Using the chrony suite to configure NTP . 4.1.1. Manually configuring the date, time, and timezone settings To display the current date and time, use either of these steps. Procedure Optional: List the timezones: Set the time zone: Set the date and time: Verification Display the date, time, and timezone: To see more details, use the timedatectl command: Additional resources date(1) and timedatectl(1) man pages 4.2. Configuring time settings by using the web console You can set a time zone and synchronize the system time with a Network Time Protocol (NTP) server in the RHEL web console. Prerequisites You have installed the RHEL 8 web console. You have enabled the cockpit service. Your user account is allowed to log in to the web console. For instructions, see Installing and enabling the web console . Procedure Log in to the RHEL 8 web console. For details, see Logging in to the web console . Click the current system time in Overview . Click System time . In the Change System Time dialog box, change the time zone if necessary. In the Set Time drop-down menu, select one of the following: Manually Use this option if you need to set the time manually, without an NTP server. Automatically using NTP server This is a default option, which synchronizes time automatically with the preset NTP servers. Automatically using specific NTP servers Use this option only if you need to synchronize the system with a specific NTP server. Specify the DNS name or the IP address of the server. Click Change . Verification Check the system time displayed in the System tab. Additional resources Using the Chrony suite to configure NTP 4.3. Configuring the system locale System-wide locale settings are stored in the /etc/locale.conf file that is read at early boot by the systemd daemon. Every service or user inherits the locale settings configured in /etc/locale.conf , unless individual programs or individual users override them. Procedure Optional: Display the current system locales settings: List available system locale settings: Update the syste locale setting: For example: + Note The GNOME Terminal does not support non-UTF8 system locales. For more information, see the Red Hat Knowledgebase solution The gnome-terminal application fails to start when the system locale is set to non-UTF8 . Additional resources man localectl(1) , man locale(7) , and man locale.conf(5) 4.4. Configuring the keyboard layout The keyboard layout settings control the layout used on the text console and graphical user interfaces. Procedure To list available keymaps: To display the current status of keymaps settings: To set or change the default system keymap. For example: Additional resources man localectl(1) , man locale(7) , and man locale.conf(5) man pages 4.5. Changing the font size in text console mode You can change the font size in the virtual console. Procedure Display the currently-used font file: List the available font files: Select a font file that supports your character set and code page. Optional: To test a font file, load it temporarily: The setfont utility applies the font file immediately and terminals use the new and font size until you reboot or apply a different font file. To return to the font file defined in /etc/vconsole.conf , enter setfont without any parameters. Edit the /etc/vconsole.conf file and set the FONT variable to the font file RHEL should load at boot time, for example: Reboot the host
timedatectl list-timezones Europe/Berlin timedatectl set-timezone <time_zone> timedatectl set-time <YYYY-mm-dd HH:MM-SS> date Mon Mar 30 16:02:59 CEST 2020 timedatectl Local time: Mon 2020-03-30 16:04:42 CEST Universal time: Mon 2020-03-30 14:04:42 UTC RTC time: Mon 2020-03-30 14:04:41 Time zone: Europe/Prague (CEST, +0200) System clock synchronized: yes NTP service: active RTC in local TZ: no localectl status System Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8 VC Keymap: de-nodeadkeys X11 Layout: de X11 Variant: nodeadkeys localectl list-locales C.UTF-8 en_US.UTF-8 en_ZA.UTF-8 en_ZW.UTF-8 localectl set-locale LANG= en_US .UTF-8 localectl list-keymaps ANSI-dvorak al al-plisi amiga-de amiga-us localectl status VC Keymap: us localectl set-keymap us cat /etc/vconsole.conf FONT="eurlatgr" ls -1 /usr/lib/kbd/consolefonts/*.psfu.gz /usr/lib/kbd/consolefonts/eurlatgr.psfu.gz /usr/lib/kbd/consolefonts/LatArCyrHeb-08.psfu.gz /usr/lib/kbd/consolefonts/LatArCyrHeb-14.psfu.gz /usr/lib/kbd/consolefonts/LatArCyrHeb-16.psfu.gz /usr/lib/kbd/consolefonts/LatArCyrHeb-16+.psfu.gz /usr/lib/kbd/consolefonts/LatArCyrHeb-19.psfu.gz setfont LatArCyrHeb-16.psfu.gz FONT=LatArCyrHeb-16 reboot