Localizing Solaris 10

This entry is in response to a comment from my previous post, asking how to localize Solaris 10. Most of everything you need is in the localeadm man page, but I'll walk through the steps here.

Step 1: Get the Solaris 10 DVD.

If you installed from the DVD, then you should already have it. However, if you started with the Solaris 10 virtual machine, then you'll need to also download the Oracle Solaris 10 9/10 Full DVD Image (zip), which contains the locales.

Step 2: Mount the DVD.

In the case of VirtualBox, with Solaris 10 running, from the VirtualBox menu select Devices > CD / DVD Devices > Choose a virtual CD / DVD disk file...

And select the Solaris 10 ISO, sol-10-u9-ga-x86-dvd.iso, in my case. This action will mount the ISO at /cdrom/sol_10_910_x86.

Step 3: View the Available Locales

The available locales are listed by region:

# localeadm -l -d /cdrom/sol_10_910_x86
Checking for installed packages. This could take a while.

Checking for Australasia region (aua)
(c_solaris packages)
|...|

All packages found.

Checking for Australasia region (aua)
(solaris1 packages)
|............|
...
Japanese (ja)

Korean (korean)

Simplified Chinese (china)

Traditional Chinese (Hong Kong) (hongkong)

Traditional Chinese (taiwan)

Thai (th_th)

India (india)

South East Asia (sea)
[ Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore ]

Southern Africa (saf)
[ South Africa ]

Done.

Step 4: Install the Locale

Once you find the region / locale you want to install, you will pass the value in parentheses to the localeadm command. I'm going to install Simplified Chinese (china) as follows:

# localeadm -a china -d /cdrom/sol_10_910_x86
Log file is /var/sadm/install/logs/localeadmin_install.2011-01-21

locale/region name is china
Adding packages for Simplified Chinese (china)

Region china will be installed.

...

The following regions are installed on unknown on Fri Jan 21 12:30:15 EST 2011

POSIX (C)


Simplified Chinese (china)



One or more locales have been added. To update the list of locales available at the login screen's "Options->Language" menu, please restart the dtlogin daemon (WARNING: this will terminate any active dtlogin sessions)

Please log out and login again to use the new locale(s) at your desktop. If you are not intending to use the new locale(s) with the GUI desktop, you can start using the new locale(s) immediately by setting the LC_* environment variables

Step 5: Eject the DVD & Reboot

I have found that the machine needs to be rebooted for the new locale to be recognized by the login screen. Before rebooting, eject the DVD, otherwise, the VM will boot from the DVD. The DVD can be ejected by deselecting it under the Devices menu (just like we added it).

# reboot

Step 6: Select the New Language

When the Login Screen appears again, select Options > Language, to get to the Select a language screen:

Then login:

Then enjoy:

At this point I wish I knew Chinese :-).