This section shows the specific settings needed to localize a FreeBSD system for the Russian language. Refer to Using Localization for a more complete description of each type of setting.

To set this locale for the login shell, add the following lines to each user's ~/.login_conf:

me:My Account:\
	:charset=KOI8-R:\
	:lang=ru_RU.KOI8-R:

To configure the console, add the following lines to /etc/rc.conf:

keymap="ru.koi8-r"
scrnmap="koi8-r2cp866"
font8x16="cp866b-8x16"
font8x14="cp866-8x14"
font8x8="cp866-8x8"
mousechar_start=3

For each ttyv entry in /etc/ttys, use cons25r as the terminal type.

To configure printing, a special output filter is needed to convert from KOI8-R to CP866 since most printers with Russian characters come with hardware code page CP866. FreeBSD includes a default filter for this purpose, /usr/libexec/lpr/ru/koi2alt. To use this filter, add this entry to /etc/printcap:

lp|Russian local line printer:\
	:sh:of=/usr/libexec/lpr/ru/koi2alt:\
	:lp=/dev/lpt0:sd=/var/spool/output/lpd:lf=/var/log/lpd-errs:

Refer to printcap(5) for a more detailed explanation.

To configure support for Russian filenames in mounted MS-DOS® file systems, include -L and the locale name when adding an entry to /etc/fstab:

/dev/ad0s2      /dos/c  msdos   rw,-Lru_RU.KOI8-R 0 0

Refer to mount_msdosfs(8) for more details.

To configure Russian fonts for Xorg, install the x11-fonts/xorg-fonts-cyrillic package. Then, check the "Files" section in /etc/X11/xorg.conf. The following line must be added before any other FontPath entries:

FontPath   "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic"

Additional Cyrillic fonts are available in the Ports Collection.

To activate a Russian keyboard, add the following to the "Keyboard" section of /etc/xorg.conf:

Option "XkbLayout"   "us,ru"
Option "XkbOptions"  "grp:toggle"

Make sure that XkbDisable is commented out in that file.

For grp:toggle use Right Alt, for grp:ctrl_shift_toggle use Ctrl+Shift. For grp:caps_toggle use CapsLock. The old CapsLock function is still available in LAT mode only using Shift+CapsLock. grp:caps_toggle does not work in Xorg for some unknown reason.

If the keyboard has “Windows®” keys, and some non-alphabetical keys are mapped incorrectly, add the following line to /etc/xorg.conf:

Option "XkbVariant" ",winkeys"

See http://koi8.pp.ru/xwin.html for more instructions on localizing Xorg applications. For more general information about KOI8-R encoding, refer to http://koi8.pp.ru/.

This section lists some additional resources for configuring other locales.