Our 64-bit 1and1 Dedicated Server shipped with German as the default language on the CLI. Dead handy when you’re trying to troubleshoot…

See the comments section for a much more elegant solution to this problem.

I thought I’d found a solution by changing the Bash language but it broke some stuff (including yum) so I went back to the default and put up with it. By chance, whilst browsing around atomicrocketturtle.com, I found Scott had fixed the same problem far more elegantly:

Here a quick step-by-step guide for FC4, on the 64-bit systems:

  1. Login as root (or su)
  2. Backup your yum.conf file: cp /etc/yum.conf /etc/yum.conf.YYYY-MM-DD
  3. Edit your /etc/yum.conf file
  4. Comment out the entries in your yum.conf which feature ‘update.onlinehome-server.info’. That server doesn’t work right now, and by commenting them out, yum will resort to the defaults in /etc/yum.repo.d
  5. Save yum.conf
  6. Run: yum install system-config-language
  7. You’ll be asked to confirm. Now, let it install…
  8. To change the language, run this from the command line: system-config-language
  9. Scroll up and choose English (British) (or whatever language you want).
  10. Hit the Tab key to switch to “OK”
  11. Hit return.
  12. Ta-da, English language feedback 🙂

For reference, your yum.conf should look something like this: yum.conf.txt