Fixing the locale issue in a clean DigitalOcean droplet

Question

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!

juanluis · Answer

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

Kamal Nasser · Answer

Are you sure running the following commands doesn’t fix it?

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

Nick Thom · Answer

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

wandmaker1 · Answer

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

David Boneham · Answer

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=“en_US.utf8”
export LANGUAGE=“en_US.utf8” export LC_ALL=“en_US.utf8”

I got this from another post in the community wiki.

eugenepankov · Answer

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

tobiasc246b229a · Answer

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?

Ruslan Voroshchuk · Answer

Please try this sudo nano /etc/default/locale and edit the contet to be like that:LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8LANG=en_US.UTF-8LC_TYPE=en_US.UTF-8 It works for me. Cheers,Ruslan

Kamran Abdul Aziz · Answer

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

tvogs · Answer

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.

Question

Fixing the locale issue in a clean DigitalOcean droplet