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HackToHell
Asked: 2012-07-12 06:08:59 +0800 CST

How do I fix my locale issue?

  • 772

I am getting this message every time I do something like starting or stopping a service.

perl: warning: Setting locale failed.   
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:   
        LANGUAGE = "en_US:en",   
        LC_ALL = (unset),   
        LC_MESSAGES = "en_US.UTF-8",   
        LANG = "en_US.UTF-8"   
    are supported and installed on your system.   
perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").   
locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: No such file or directory   
locale: Cannot set LC_MESSAGES to default locale: No such file or directory   
locale: Cannot set LC_ALL to default locale: No such file or directory   
(Reading database ... 21173 files and directories currently installed.)  
Removing bind9 ...  
 * Stopping domain name service... bind9                                        [ OK ]
Processing triggers for man-db ...   
locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: No such file or directory   
locale: Cannot set LC_MESSAGES to default locale: No such file or directory   
locale: Cannot set LC_ALL to default locale: No such file or directory

How do I fix this error ?

command-line

20 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    First run locale to list what locales currently defined for the current user account:

    $ locale
LANG=C
LANGUAGE=
LC_CTYPE=fi_FI.UTF-8
LC_NUMERIC="C"
LC_TIME="C"
LC_COLLATE=fi_FI.UTF-8
LC_MONETARY="C"
LC_MESSAGES=fi_FI.UTF-8
LC_PAPER="C"
LC_NAME="C"
LC_ADDRESS="C"
LC_TELEPHONE="C"
LC_MEASUREMENT="C"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="C"
LC_ALL=

    Then generate the missing locale and reconfigure locales to take notice:

    $ sudo locale-gen "en_US.UTF-8"
Generating locales...
  en_US.UTF-8... done
Generation complete.

$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales
Generating locales...
  en_US.UTF-8... up-to-date
Generation complete.

    Now you will not see any errors anymore!

    • 571

  2. Nothing suggested above worked in my case (Ubuntu Server 12.04LTS). What finally helped was putting to the file /etc/environment:

    LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8
LANG=en_US.UTF-8

    For some reason it was missing. The outputs for locale and other commands appeared like the variables were properly defined. In other words don't take for granted all the basic stuff is declared where it should be declared.

    • 413

  3. They should disappear after issuing:

    sudo locale-gen en_US en_US.UTF-8
sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales

    dpkg-reconfigure reconfigures packages after they have already been installed. Pass it the names of a package or packages to reconfigure. It will ask configuration questions, much like when the package was first installed.

    • 169

  4. Just add the following to your .bashrc file (assuming you're using bash)

    export LC_ALL="en_US.UTF-8"
    • 137

  5. This is a common problem if you are connecting remotely, so the solution is to not forward your locale. Edit /etc/ssh/ssh_config and comment out SendEnv LANG LC_* line.

    • 107

  6. There is a command for that:

    sudo update-locale LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 LANG=en_US.UTF-8

    It updates /etc/default/locale with provided values.

    To apply the changes, you can

    source /etc/default/locale
    • 84

  7. What worked for me on 12.10 was this: 

    apt-get install language-pack-en-base

    This was after dpkg-reconfigure locales produced no results.

    • 35

  8. Don't forget exit your SSH session (or your X11) by exiting and logging back in again. All of these suggestions didn't work for me unless I logged back in....

    • 21

  9. For Ubuntu 12.10 none of the above worked except for ratzs' solution. I recommend adding this to your /etc/bash.bashrc file:

    export LC_ALL="en_ZA.UTF-8"
export LC_CTYPE="en_ZA.UTF-8"
    • 12

  10. I was stuck in a weird state where my local machine is set to es and so the remote machine (via vagrant) had been provisioned in an un-handled state. Therefore, I had to use the manual export= only to facilitate a successful dpkg-reconfigure. Then the system is fine.

    export LC_ALL="en_US.UTF-8"
sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales
    • 12