Question

Fixing the locale issue in a clean DigitalOcean droplet

Posted February 21, 2014 35.6k views
I've read numerous posts about people having problems with the default locale on a clean Digital Ocean droplet with Ubuntu. This manifests in getting errors like: bash: warning: setlocale: LC_ALL: cannot change locale (en_US) There is a quick fix, which is just running locale-gen en_US But. Can't this be fixed in the default Ubuntu image? Apparently en_US is installed as the default locale, but the locale files aren't generated. Am I thinking too simple? Are there any reasons why this can't be included in the default image? Thanks!
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18 answers
juanluis March 27, 2014
this works for me:

edit the file
/etc/environment

add one line with your LANG, like this

LC_ALL="en_US.UTF-8"

save and reboot

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  • chroma April 22, 2015

    thanks ! This works perfectly

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  • jbf4286 November 2, 2015

    Thanks a lot for this! =)

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  • olofjondelius January 31, 2018

    This is moving stuff forward for me! However one question:

    I just add in etc/environment exactly this:

    LC_ALL="en_US.UTF-8"

    –>reboot

    Then when I type the ‘locale’ command my list shows like this:

    LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.UTF-8"
** LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 **

    The “ … ” Are missing on the LC_ALL. Is this a problem?

    edited by asb
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kamaln7 March 8, 2014
Are you sure running the following commands doesn't fix it? 
sudo locale-gen en_US.UTF-8

sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales
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NickTh August 1, 2017 
export LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8
export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8

Then run

sudo update-locale

Now run

locale

you shouldn’t see any errors.

For a permanent solution,
Add the above export commands inside ~/.profile

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kamaln7 February 22, 2014
What exact image are you using?
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plentyofroom March 4, 2014
Just create a new droplet with the default ubuntu (12.04.3 x64) and then when you login with the console via ssh and type locale there's an error about this. I can't seem to fix this with running locale-gen en_US or whatever "fix" I could find on StackOverflow or the Ubuntu pages.
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kamaln7 March 5, 2014
Can you post the exact error?
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plentyofroom March 5, 2014
locale
locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: No such file or directory
locale: Cannot set LC_ALL to default locale: No such file or directory
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=
LC_CTYPE=UTF-8
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=
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plentyofroom March 5, 2014
..and you will see errors like this when you try to set stuff or when an app wants to do something like a set locale.

~# sudo debconf-set-selections <<< "mysql-server mysql-server/root_password password root"
perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
LANGUAGE = (unset),
LC_ALL = (unset),
LC_CTYPE = "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_ALL to default locale: No such file or directory
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jens.anders.bakke April 3, 2014
Thanks juanluis
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jens.anders.bakke April 3, 2014
Err.. Short reply

Thanks juanluis, that fixed it for me :)
The commands from Kamal didn't help at all :/
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alexik April 30, 2015

juanluis, thanks this worked. Just have to remember to reboot before do anything.

What ceases to amaze me is how DO can put out stuff in prime time wasting everyones time with such an idiotic problem, there are posts all over the place and such a simple fix. Bad first hour on DO suffice to say ;(

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tvogs June 24, 2015

I just had the same problem on a fresh droplet. The solution worked, however it’s a bit weird that the linux images are not preconfigured correctly with working locale settings.

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ekamran August 28, 2015

@juanluis That works for me as well on One-Click WordPress setup. Cheers.

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owlookit September 25, 2016

Please try this

sudo nano /etc/default/locale

and edit the contet to be like that:
LANGUAGE=enUS.UTF-8
LCALL=enUS.UTF-8
LANG=enUS.UTF-8
LCTYPE=enUS.UTF-8

It works for me.

Cheers,
Ruslan

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tobiasc246b229a November 27, 2016

It is now 2016 and this problem is still not fixed.
Everytime I have to test something and I spin up a Debian or Ubuntu server I ran into this problem.
Until I realized it and then fixed it I wasted so much time that all those proposed speed advantages of DO are gone anyway.
Currently it looks like this:

perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
    LANGUAGE = (unset),
    LC_ALL = (unset),
    LC_PAPER = "de_CH.UTF-8",
    LC_ADDRESS = "de_CH.UTF-8",
    LC_MONETARY = "de_CH.UTF-8",
    LC_NUMERIC = "de_CH.UTF-8",
    LC_TELEPHONE = "de_CH.UTF-8",
    LC_IDENTIFICATION = "de_CH.UTF-8",
    LC_MEASUREMENT = "de_CH.UTF-8",
    LC_TIME = "de_CH.UTF-8",
    LC_NAME = "de_CH.UTF-8",
    LANG = "en_US.UTF-8"
    are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to a fallback locale ("en_US.UTF-8").

What are those crap entries doing in a fresh droplet?

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eugenepankov February 1, 2017

It is now 2017 and this problem is still not fixed.

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dboneham January 17, 2018

The problem still subsists as of January 2018. The solution for me was to add the following to (in my case) the .zshrc file in ~/.

#fix for locale issues when connecting to ubuntu servers
export LANG=“enUS.utf8”

export LANGUAGE=“enUS.utf8”
export LCALL=“enUS.utf8”

I got this from another post in the community wiki.

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wandmaker1 November 12, 2018

I have written bash scrip to fix this issue, check it out,
https://github.com/iam-rocketman/ubuntu-locale-fix

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