Fixing missing locales

Question

I've been experiencing some locale issues lately. I first noticed it when trying to run calibre from the terminal.

Running calibre returned:

WARNING: Failed to set default libc locale, using en_US.UTF-8

Then I ran locale which gave:

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

After some research I found that the file /etc/environment might need something added to it, but I got confused because its content seems not related at all:

PATH="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games"

How can I fix this issue? I am running Kubuntu 17.10.

EDIT: I found the file /etc/default/locale which contains the more promissing :

    #  File generated by update-locale
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_NUMERIC="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="de_DE.UTF-8"

Is this how it should look?

Possible duplicate of What is the thing in KDE that override my locale settings — Gunnar Hjalmarsson, Nov 25 '17 at 15:31
thanks for your comment. Unfortuanately, I dont have the directory specified in that accepted answer and the file doesn#t exist on my system at all... — Douglas James Bock, Nov 25 '17 at 19:31

Gunnar Hjalmarsson · Accepted Answer · 2017-11-25T22:06:43.460

In a comment I pointed you to What is the thing in KDE that override my locale settings, but you let us know that the file ~/.kde/env/setlocale.sh is not present on your machine.

I still think this problem is related to Kubuntu/KDE somehow. The locale output includes the locale name en_DE.UTF-8, which does not exist, and that's the reason for the error message.

So I'd advise you to go to Kubuntu's language settings GUI. Probably you have stated English as language and Germany as country, which unfortunately leads Kubuntu to set this non-existing locale. Try for instance to change the country to Denmark, and then relogin. Hopefully that will set the locale en_DK.UTF-8 (which exists) instead.

The issue has been reported as bug #1322968.

Brilliant! That did the trick. In the KDE "Formats" GUI I seelcted 'Germany-English (en_DE)'. I corrected it to 'Deutschland-Deutsch (de_DE)' and after reboot everything resolved. Thanks very much. — Douglas James Bock, Nov 26 '17 at 09:10

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 25 '17 at 14:23

0

Have you seen this thread? How do I fix my locale issue? This helps me on some of the missing locales see if this works for you.

answered Nov 25 '17 at 14:23

Yien

224

1

This case is probably specific to Kubuntu/KDE; see the suggested duplicate bug. – Gunnar Hjalmarsson Nov 25 '17 at 15:37

GoldHaloWings · Answer 3 · 2017-11-26T04:15:11.967

-2

Try:sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales

edited Nov 26 '17 at 04:15

answered Nov 26 '17 at 03:23

GoldHaloWings

517

Given that en_DE.UTF-8 does not exist in /usr/share/i18n/SUPPORTED, how would that help? – Gunnar Hjalmarsson Nov 26 '17 at 03:59
I update my answer – GoldHaloWings Nov 26 '17 at 04:14
If this not solving your problem it seems that something has been removed – GoldHaloWings Nov 26 '17 at 04:17
No, you misunderstood me. The thing is that a locale name which does not exist in glibc is being set, so even if you regenerate the locales, no en_DE.UTF-8 locale will be created, and the error won't go away. (Excluding the -u option doesn't make a difference in this respect.) – Gunnar Hjalmarsson Nov 26 '17 at 04:35
I see, i will search if i can find something useful to answer – GoldHaloWings Nov 26 '17 at 04:40

Fixing missing locales

3 Answers3