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    Please do not post a support request without first reading and following the advice in https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first

    Dialog Boxes contain x's and q"s instead of shading

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Help and Support
    dialog box x q
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    • EfriimE
      Efriim @mitu
      last edited by Efriim

      @mitu
      I mistyped the command earlier but edited it.
      sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-setup
      and
      sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales
      You should be able to fix it with those, ISO-8859-1 will even work, but you want to at least generate a UTF-8 as well.

      If you're having the x and qs in ssh like me(I dunno how long its been that way), then I think if you switch back to ISO-8859 it will display properly, windows generally uses a ISO, alternatively you can likely change a setting in your ssh client program to use UTF-8 as per other linux defaults.

      mituM 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • mituM
        mitu Global Moderator @Efriim
        last edited by

        @Efriim The fonts through SSH are fine, it's just the console ones that are buggy. I don't have a keyboard on the PI, so it's a bit challenging to fiddle with the terminal settings.
        However, as part of the digging process, I installed a 4.4 image and updated RetroPie only - the error doesn't show up. Next is an OS update and I'll see if anything changes after that.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • mituM
          mitu Global Moderator
          last edited by

          An OS update makes the error reported to appear - so it's definitely something OS/Linux related that triggers this. Will have to figure out which package broke what.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • B
            brunozero
            last edited by

            this error appears to me too, I guess it was after updating the script to 4.4.9.
            But so far everything seems to work normally, this error appears when accessing the retropie setup, so I looked in the forum this seems to be related to the update of the last scrip retropie.
            is there any way to reverse this? or is it just waiting for the next script update?

            mituM 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • mituM
              mitu Global Moderator @brunozero
              last edited by

              @brunozero It's doesn't seem to be a RetroPie problem, but one from Raspbian. Did you read the rest of the topic ?

              B 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • B
                brunozero @mitu
                last edited by

                @mitu said in Dialog Boxes contain x's and q"s instead of shading:

                Raspbian

                I'm sorry I'm noob, just a regular user who noticed the error, has this error been with the hardware? is there any solution for him or his cause?

                mituM 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • mituM
                  mitu Global Moderator @brunozero
                  last edited by

                  @brunozero You can use @Efriim's solution to reconfiure your language/locale and choose an ISO-8859-1 locale.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • mituM
                    mitu Global Moderator
                    last edited by mitu

                    OK, found the culprit - it's the raspi-config update from Jan 2019 that changes the auto-login service (https://github.com/RPi-Distro/raspi-config/commit/d33487cbeac581d2ce91d8372f5feb1e2b5b7e3a).
                    TL;DR version - when configuring the auto-login (via raspi-config), the $TERM variable is replaced with the value from the current running session and added to the auto-login config file, instead of being added literally as $TERM in the auto-login configuration file.

                    So, if I ran raspi-config from a SSH session, my $TERM is xterm-256color - this gets added to the auto-login session, but the Linux terminal doesn't have the same capabilities (should be $TERM=linux).
                    This does not happen if you run raspi-config from the console, via the keyboard.

                    H B 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • H
                      hhromic @mitu
                      last edited by

                      @mitu that's a great debugging job, very good catch. I can confirm indeed this is happening. In my case $TERM got expanded to linux so I never noticed. Indeed this is a bug and good to see you already posted an issue on the Foundation's GitHub. Very well done.

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • B
                        brunozero @mitu
                        last edited by

                        @mitu thanks for solving, but how do I apply the correction? I opened the link and got a lot of lines of code :(, unfortunately I do not know how to do this

                        mituM 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • A
                          Aqualime
                          last edited by

                          I installed a clean 4.4 image and performed a full update. Obviously the same issue as above. I just wanted to make sure the error we are getting is related to the messy text in the setup menu. I'm not sure I understood.

                          Exception OSError: (9, 'Bad file descriptor') in <module 'threading' from '/usr/lib/python2.7/threading.pyc'> ignored
                          
                          mituM 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • mituM
                            mitu Global Moderator @brunozero
                            last edited by

                            @brunozero You'll have to edit the /etc/systemd/system/getty@tty1.service.d/autologin.conf file and replace - on the 3nd line:

                            ExecStart=-/sbin/agetty --autologin pi --noclear %I xterm-256color
                            

                            with

                            ExecStart=-/sbin/agetty --autologin pi --noclear %I $TERM
                            

                            then reboot.

                            B 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                            • mituM
                              mitu Global Moderator @Aqualime
                              last edited by

                              @Aqualime For the 2nd error you reported, there is a fix pending, when it will be accepted to the RetroPie-Setup repository you'll only have to update the script.

                              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                              • B
                                brunozero @mitu
                                last edited by brunozero

                                @mitu Thanks a lot, I already turned off the rpb but before turning off I updated the script and apparently the error problem stopped, but tomorrow I confirm, if I still continue I run your solution, thank you very much

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • LolonoisL
                                  Lolonois
                                  last edited by

                                  FWIW the Issue is pending in raspi-config

                                  https://github.com/RPi-Distro/raspi-config/issues/88

                                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                  • mituM
                                    mitu Global Moderator
                                    last edited by

                                    Well, the issue got fixed in the raspi-config repository, so the next raspi-config release should make the problem go away.

                                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
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