14

I just did a fresh install of ubuntu using debootstrap. When I do sudo aptitude upgrade, I get this error message:

perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
    LANGUAGE = "en_US:en",
    LC_ALL = (unset),
    LANG = "en_US.ISO-8859-1"
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

Can someone please tell me how to resolve this issue? I see a lot of postings similar to this online but none of them seems to resolve the problem.

I am using Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. Thanks.

FYI:

$ locale -a
C
C.UTF-8
en_AG
en_AG.utf8
en_AU.utf8
en_BW.utf8
en_CA.utf8
en_DK.utf8
en_GB.utf8
en_HK.utf8
en_IE.utf8
en_IN
en_IN.utf8
en_NG
en_NG.utf8
en_NZ.utf8
en_PH.utf8
en_SG.utf8
en_US.iso88591
en_US.utf8
en_ZA.utf8
en_ZM
en_ZM.utf8
en_ZW.utf8
POSIX

and

$ locale
LANG=en_US.ISO-8859-1
LANGUAGE=en_US:en
LC_CTYPE="en_US.ISO-8859-1"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.ISO-8859-1"
LC_TIME="en_US.ISO-8859-1"
LC_COLLATE="en_US.ISO-8859-1"
LC_MONETARY="en_US.ISO-8859-1"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.ISO-8859-1"
LC_PAPER="en_US.ISO-8859-1"
LC_NAME="en_US.ISO-8859-1"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US.ISO-8859-1"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.ISO-8859-1"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US.ISO-8859-1"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.ISO-8859-1"
LC_ALL=
Gunnar Hjalmarsson
  • 34,191
user1527227
  • 425

6 Answers6

11

An Ubuntu desktop should be set up with UTF-8 encoding. For some reason your system tries to set the latin1 locale en_US.ISO-8859-1. You should really change that.

Maybe the setting takes place in /etc/default/locale.

Whereever it happens, change it to

LANG=en_US.UTF-8

or else you will encounter various locale related surprises.

Gunnar Hjalmarsson
  • 34,191
10

A permanent solution for locale issue is to export the locale variables in your ~/.bash_profile. You can also use /etc/profile file instead of .bash_profile to have the change take effect for all users on the system.

echo "export LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8
" >> ~/.bash_profile

Don't forget to start a new shell or to manually source ~/.bash_profile.

NotTheDr01ds
  • 22,082
Ajeet Khan
  • 523
  • 7
  • 11
7

The debootstrap doesn't create a locale. So we use something else as a locale. Use this command:

sudo locale-gen en_US.ISO-8859-1

I hope this helps!

4

This works for me.

  1. export LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8
  2. export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
  3. export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8
  4. sudo locale-gen en_US.UTF-8
  5. sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales
zx485
  • 2,865
Airat Kazanbaev
  • 41
1

What worked for me is as follows:

export LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8 export LANG=en_US.UTF-8 export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 sudo locale-gen en_US.UTF-8 sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales

For a permanent solution you can put

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

in your .zshrc or .bashrc

Ref

  1. https://jee-appy.blogspot.com/2016/02/set-locale-on-ubuntu-permanent-solution.html
  2. https://www.thomas-krenn.com/en/wiki/Perl_warning_Setting_locale_failed_in_Debian
alpha_989
  • 135
1

Add LC_ALL="en_US.UTF-8" to /etc/environment and then restart the instance/machine

For more info visit this blog

http://www.pixelninja.me/how-to-fix-invalid-locale-setting-in-ubuntu-14-04-in-the-cloud/