The Euro symbol on FreeBSD

3.1 Setting up your console font

Depending on your console resolution and size you will need one of the following lines in rc.conf:

font8x16="iso15-8x16.fnt" # from /usr/share/syscons/fonts/*
font8x14="iso15-8x14.fnt"
font8x8="iso15-8x8.fnt"

This will effectively select the ISO8859-15 also known as Latin-9 font. ISO8859-15 is a variation of ISO8859-1. You can tell the difference between the two by looking at the Euro symbol: its decimal value is 164. In ISO8859-1 you will notice a circle with four little strokes at the corners. This is often termed the “universal currency symbol”. In ISO8859-15, instead of the little circle, you have the Euro Symbol. Otherwise the fonts are more or less identical.

As the next step you should either reboot your system to let the changes take effect or (manually) take the steps that would have been taken at the system startup:

% vidcontrol -f iso15-8x16.fnt

To check if the font has been selected execute the following short awk script:

#!/usr/bin/awk -f
BEGIN {
        for(i = 160; i < 180 ; i++)
                printf"%3d %c\n",i,i
}

The result should reveal the Euro sign at position 164.

3.2 Setting up your keyboard for the Euro

Most keyboard maps should already be set up correctly. I.e: If you have a german keyboard and your Umlaut keys are working, you can safely skip this section since the keyboard already maps whatever key combination is necessary (e.g.: Alt Gr+e) to decimal value 164. If running into problems, the best way to check is to take a look at /usr/share/syscons/keymaps/*.kbd. The format of the key mapping files is described in keyboard(4). kbdcontrol(1) can be used to load a custom keymap.

Once the correct keyboard map is selected, it should be added to /etc/rc.conf with the line:

keymap="german.iso" # or another map

As stated above, this step has most probably already been taken by you at installation time (with sysinstall). If not, either reboot or load the new keymap via kbdcontrol(1).

To verify the keyboard mapping, switch to a new console and at the login prompt, instead of logging in, try to type the Euro key. If it is not working, either file a bug report via send-pr(1) or make sure you in fact chose the right keyboard map.

3.3 Fixing the environment variables

The shells (bash, tcsh) revert to the readline(3) library which in turn respects the LC_CTYPE environment variable. LC_CTYPE must be set before the shell is completely running. Luckily it suffices to add the line:

export LC_CTYPE=de_DE.ISO8859-15

to your .bash_profile (bash), or:

setenv LC_CTYPE de_DE.ISO8859-15

to your .login (tcsh) file. Of course, de_DE should be replaced by your language. Next, log out, log back in again, and verify your Euro key is working. By now most console applications should respond to the Euro key. Extra configuration steps for special programs like pine might still be necessary however.