Setting date, time, regional and language settings in Longhorn Server Core
Ok... so we do not have Control Panel in the Start menu (hey! there is no Start menu!), so what do we do ?
The thing with Core is that despite it's lack of the nice interface, it is still capable of running some GUI based applications. What we do know though is that all those Control Panel applets were actually files with CPL extension that were launched using control.exe program. So let's poke around and see if we can find any of those in Core:
Not much, right ? So let's try executing those.
Typing "c:\windows\system32\intl.cpl" at the command prompt brings up somewhat familiar dialog:
Now this is something we can work with. Living in Israel, one of the first things I do when I configure a server is to add the Hebrew keyboard support. In Longhorn this is done by going to "Keyboards and Languages" tab and clicking the "Change Keyboards" button. One good thing I have noticed is the fact that in Longhorn you do not need to check this "Install files for complex script and right-to-left languages" checkbox to make Hebrew available as keyboard layout. Just click the "Add" button, scroll down and choose Hebrew:
Couple notes while on topic:
1) When configuring keyboards and going to the "Language Bar" tab, you will see options that, though available, not work on the Core (well, you can't dock the language bar in the taskbar as there is no taskbar ;) ). I guess this will be fixed in future builds. But if you want an indicator of currently selected language, you can select "Language Bar: Floating on Desktop" and it will happily show it for you (see screenshot below).
2) Clicking "Install/Uninstall languages" under "Keyboards and Languages" tab results in a nasty error dialog (not sure whether this option should even exist in the Core):
Well, enough with the language settings. Let's set the system clock and timezone. Typing at the command prompt: "c:\windows\timedate.cpl" brings up the dialog that I guess you can handle on your own ;) :
Notice for Israel residents: Longhorn comes pre-configured for Jerusalem timezone with daylight settings till year 2023 ! You do not need to update the servers with daylight settings. This is achieved by a change in how the daylight settings are stored in the registry: till now the registry stored only the beginning and the end of summer clock and those settings were applied for every consecutive year. In Longhorn there are seperate registry settings for each upcoming year till 2023:
Enough for today...