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

mitu

@papaxris Sorry, I can't find a solution right now. Using the default console setup seems to make raspi-config work fine, however it seems to break the RetroPie-Setup and the runcommand display. Switching to

CHARMAP="ISO-8859-1"

makes the opposite happen - raspi-config appears garbled while the RetroPie setup / runcommand work fine.
Looks like something in RetroPie setup/runcommand changed that makes this look different.

papaxris

Appreciate the details.

I'm glad we were able to investigate this a bit, its mostly a nuisance; but it should work correct.

I'm happy to revisit this if you want to dive deeper into this in the future.

Thank you for your time and effort.

xoan

I have the same problem after updating the Raspbian packages, but it seems to affect only when using a monitor attached directly to the Raspberry Pi (both HDMI / Composite outputs), but not when login thru SSH.

mitu

@xoan Yes, I've seen it reported a few times. Did you also update the RetroPie scripts or just Raspbian ?

Efriim

EDIT:sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-setup tab completion works for invoking some of the debian commands anyways it was console-setup not console-data
utf-8 should work

mitu

@Efriim Did this fixed it for you ?

Efriim

@mitu
actually I tested it ISO-8859-1
but then it fixed it with UTF-8
I didn't try a reboot though.
Will try ISO-8859-1 then reboot, UTF-8 works though.

mitu

@Efriim Sure, but how about raspi-config. If you look at the topic, you see that the problem is that there's no common setting to make this work for both raspi-config and RetroPie-Setup at once.

Efriim

@mitu
ISO-8859-1 wasn't even installed on mine, so I used the raspi-config update locales and checked all en-us, and now they both work.
I didnt actually get x and qs though.
Reading...

mitu

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

I didnt actually get x and qs though.

So, if you didn't experience the problem reported by @papaxris or @xoan ?

Efriim

@mitu
I was just trying to help. OPs second image upload is what I get when I set it to ISO-8859-1 before I installed ISO-8859-1. The question was almost answered, just needed to install locale ISO-8859-1 or change console to UTF-8. I don't know what give x and q.

Cool font by the way, I think I'm going to keep it.

mitu

@Efriim The question is - the Raspbian defaults have been working for so long without problems, so what exactly is causing this problem to appear now ?
I'm interested what causes this - is it RetroPie or Raspbian ? If you have an up-to-date RetroPie setup, but don't experience the problem, then it's most likely a Raspbian thing. Is your Raspbian system also up-to-date ?

Efriim

@mitu
I couldn't give an x or q about setups, but I do. I didn't have any problem, I was just trying to help.
When I first installed Retropie, last christmas. I remembered something like this. I know I installed US ISO-8859-1, and I dont think I changed the console but I didn't care that it looked different. I remember updating a package from source and reading some errors about either the codepage missing or I was using the wrong codepage, linux standard is use UTF-8.

mitu

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

I couldn't give an x or q about setups, but I do. I didn't have any problem, I was just trying to help.

I think you're getting this wrong.
My question if you get the same error was in order to determine what's different in your setup from the other people that reported this (including me). Please re-read my previous update and try to provide an answer if you really want to help - if you're on the last version of RetroPie but you don't get the error, then it means it's something that's changed in Raspbian. That's why I asked if you're up-to-date with your Raspbian installation, because you can update now the OS and see if you can reproduce the error.

EDIT: can you also post the contents of your /etc/default/console-setup file ?

Efriim

@mitu
I understand. I haven't upgraded raspbian packages. Will update.

ACTIVE_CONSOLES="/dev/tty[1-6]"
CHARMAP="UTF-8"
CODESET="guess"
FONTFACE=
FONTSIZE=
VIDEOMODE=
They were blank except for codeset and CHARMAP and active_consoles, I added the fontface you use. videomode was blank.

Efriim

I have one error, I think it was there before the raspbian upgrade but after a 4.4.9.

Exception OSError: (9, 'Bad file descriptor') in <module 'threading' from '/usr/lib/python2.7/threading.pyc'> ignored

The update went smoothly, there was some miscellaneous errors but I can't remember what they were now, they were in the modules.

The retropie menu looks normal
The raspi-config menu looks normal

mitu

@Efriim Thanks for the test - I'll try your config file on my installation later on to see if anything changes. Just to make sure, you're opening them from Emulationstation and not via SSH ?

Efriim

Try using the locale update in raspi config again. You can check both UTF-8 and ISO-8859 to install, try using UTF-8.

Yeah I'm using emulation stations menu. If you use SSH there is probably a way to set the codepage for both the console and the ssh client.

mitu

@Efriim Sadly, the configuration that works for you doesn't seem to work in my case - I still get the same behavior as the one reported in this topic. Mind you, I'm still using the default locale - en_GB.UTF-8.
I guess I'll have to dig a bit further.

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.