Hi Nikos,
> Maybe the commands "unicode_start" and "unicode_stop" might help. Bull's eye! "unicode_stop" reverses the behavior completely to what the old kernel did. I looked inside; both are actually shell scripts; unicode_stop is very simple: kbd_mode -a if test -t ; then echo -n -e '\033%@' fi unicode_start does a little more (also change the keyboard mapping and choose a unicode font), but it also contains kbd_mode -u and if test -t 1 -a -t 2 ; then echo -n -e '\033%G' fi So the escape sequences are 'ESC % @' and 'ESC % G'. Thanks very much for this collaborate effort! Simultaneously, the unnamed user (sorry, I just forgot to ask whether he minds being named or not) told me to try the kernel parameter "vt.default_utf8=0", and that does the trick as well. So the smoothest workaround will now be putting that into lilo.conf (yes, I know, I'm hopelessly old-fashioned - old encodings, old bootloaders ... ;-)). I think I'll continue on a kernel list to figure out what kernel 2.6.27 does differently from 2.6.17, and why (and whether that behaviour cannot be changed with a compile-time option). I think that part is really not a gentoo-specific question. But I'll report here when I get the result! Best regards! Florian