Ubuntu Manpage: localectl - Control the system locale and keyboard layout settings

Provided by: systemd_245.4-4ubuntu3.24_amd64

NAME

       localectl - Control the system locale and keyboard layout settings

SYNOPSIS

       localectl [OPTIONS...] {COMMAND}

DESCRIPTION

       localectl may be used to query and change the system locale and keyboard layout settings.
       It communicates with systemd-localed(8) to modify files such as /etc/locale.conf and
       /etc/vconsole.conf.

       The system locale controls the language settings of system services and of the UI before
       the user logs in, such as the display manager, as well as the default for users after
       login.

       The keyboard settings control the keyboard layout used on the text console and of the
       graphical UI before the user logs in, such as the display manager, as well as the default
       for users after login.

       Note that the changes performed using this tool might require the initramfs to be rebuilt
       to take effect during early system boot. The initramfs is not rebuilt automatically by
       localectl.

       Note that systemd-firstboot(1) may be used to initialize the system locale for mounted
       (but not booted) system images.

COMMANDS

The following commands are understood:

status
Show current settings of the system locale and keyboard mapping. If no command is
specified, this is the implied default.

set-locale LOCALE, set-locale VARIABLE=LOCALE...
Set the system locale. This takes one locale such as "en_US.UTF-8", or takes one or
more locale assignments such as "LANG=de_DE.utf8", "LC_MESSAGES=en_GB.utf8", and so
on. If one locale without variable name is provided, then "LANG=" locale variable will
be set. See locale(7) for details on the available settings and their meanings. Use
list-locales for a list of available locales (see below).

list-locales
List available locales useful for configuration with set-locale.

set-keymap MAP [TOGGLEMAP]
Set the system keyboard mapping for the console and X11. This takes a mapping name
(such as "de" or "us"), and possibly a second one to define a toggle keyboard mapping.
Unless --no-convert is passed, the selected setting is also applied as the default
system keyboard mapping of X11, after converting it to the closest matching X11
keyboard mapping. Use list-keymaps for a list of available keyboard mappings (see
below).

list-keymaps
List available keyboard mappings for the console, useful for configuration with
set-keymap.

set-x11-keymap LAYOUT [MODEL [VARIANT [OPTIONS]]]
Set the system default keyboard mapping for X11 and the virtual console. This takes a
keyboard mapping name (such as "de" or "us"), and possibly a model, variant, and
options, see kbd(4) for details. Unless --no-convert is passed, the selected setting
is also applied as the system console keyboard mapping, after converting it to the
closest matching console keyboard mapping.

list-x11-keymap-models, list-x11-keymap-layouts, list-x11-keymap-variants [LAYOUT],
list-x11-keymap-options
List available X11 keymap models, layouts, variants and options, useful for
configuration with set-keymap. The command list-x11-keymap-variants optionally takes a
layout parameter to limit the output to the variants suitable for the specific layout.

OPTIONS

       The following options are understood:

       --no-ask-password
           Do not query the user for authentication for privileged operations.

       --no-convert
           If set-keymap or set-x11-keymap is invoked and this option is passed, then the keymap
           will not be converted from the console to X11, or X11 to console, respectively.

       -H, --host=
           Execute the operation remotely. Specify a hostname, or a username and hostname
           separated by "@", to connect to. The hostname may optionally be suffixed by a port ssh
           is listening on, separated by ":", and then a container name, separated by "/", which
           connects directly to a specific container on the specified host. This will use SSH to
           talk to the remote machine manager instance. Container names may be enumerated with
           machinectl -H HOST. Put IPv6 addresses in brackets.

       -M, --machine=
           Execute operation on a local container. Specify a container name to connect to.

       -h, --help
           Print a short help text and exit.

       --version
           Print a short version string and exit.

       --no-pager
           Do not pipe output into a pager.

EXIT STATUS

       On success, 0 is returned, a non-zero failure code otherwise.

ENVIRONMENT

$SYSTEMD_PAGER
Pager to use when --no-pager is not given; overrides $PAGER. If neither $SYSTEMD_PAGER
nor $PAGER are set, a set of well-known pager implementations are tried in turn,
including less(1) and more(1), until one is found. If no pager implementation is
discovered no pager is invoked. Setting this environment variable to an empty string
or the value "cat" is equivalent to passing --no-pager.

$SYSTEMD_LESS
Override the options passed to less (by default "FRSXMK").

Users might want to change two options in particular:

K
This option instructs the pager to exit immediately when Ctrl+C is pressed. To
allow less to handle Ctrl+C itself to switch back to the pager command prompt,
unset this option.

If the value of $SYSTEMD_LESS does not include "K", and the pager that is invoked
is less, Ctrl+C will be ignored by the executable, and needs to be handled by the
pager.

X
This option instructs the pager to not send termcap initialization and
deinitialization strings to the terminal. It is set by default to allow command
output to remain visible in the terminal even after the pager exits. Nevertheless,
this prevents some pager functionality from working, in particular paged output
cannot be scrolled with the mouse.

See less(1) for more discussion.

$SYSTEMD_LESSCHARSET
Override the charset passed to less (by default "utf-8", if the invoking terminal is
determined to be UTF-8 compatible).

$SYSTEMD_COLORS
The value must be a boolean. Controls whether colorized output should be generated.
This can be specified to override the decision that systemd makes based on $TERM and
what the console is connected to.

$SYSTEMD_URLIFY
The value must be a boolean. Controls whether clickable links should be generated in
the output for terminal emulators supporting this. This can be specified to override
the decision that systemd makes based on $TERM and other conditions.

NOTES

        1. The XKB Configuration Guide
           http://www.x.org/releases/current/doc/xorg-docs/input/XKB-Config.html