CentOS 6 and locale error

Question

I just installed CentOS 6 and whenever I login to the system via SSH remotely, I get the following error:

-bash: warning: setlocale: LC_CTYPE: cannot change locale (UTF-8)

When I type "locale" on the command line, I get the following output:

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
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=

What can be the problem? How can I solve this issue?

your solution of commenting out the SendEnv LANG LC_* arg worked for me on Mac OS X 10.7.5 — , Dec 19 '12 at 07:49

score 18 · Answer 1 · edited Aug 06 '13 at 09:34

18

Solved this by disabling "Set locale environment variables on startup" in Terminal Settings > Advanced as per this screenshot.

enter image description here

NOTE: If you use iTerm2 you can disable the "Set locale variables automatically" option in Preferences > Profiles > Terminal

edited Aug 06 '13 at 09:34

Camaleo

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answered Feb 06 '12 at 21:49

Nils

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This worked for me. Specifically, Terminal.app was setting "LC_CTYPE=UTF-8" which then caused the errors reported by the OP. Alternatively, `unset LC_CTYPE` or `export LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8` fixup the problem after login. – tardate May 02 '13 at 09:53
This solved it for me, thx – pjvds Mar 06 '15 at 10:02

score 12 · Answer 2 · edited Aug 27 '13 at 18:18

12

Simple way:

Add

 LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"

to /etc/sysconfig/i18n.

edited Aug 27 '13 at 18:18

slm

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answered Aug 27 '13 at 12:07

gpupo

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It works for me, after so many tries. – Tommy May 27 '14 at 09:38

score 10 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 29 '15 at 09:09

10

On the server you ssh from do you have a locale set via an environment variable? In looking at my CentOS 6 installation, the only locale that I can find supported is identified as en_US.utf8 (discovered using locale -a command). Could this be the problem?

In my testing, when I set the LC_ALL environment variable to en_US.UTF-8, ssh'd to the server, the output of my locale command was set to POSIX in my case. This the same as when I have NOT set (i.e. unset) the LC_ALL variable before ssh'ing.

When I set my LC_ALL variable to en_US.utf8 or en_US.utf-8, ssh'd to my CentOS 6 box, the output of the locale was the same as what was set on the source box.

Notice I used no caps for UTF also.

edited Jun 29 '15 at 09:09

Matteo Guarnerio

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answered Oct 12 '11 at 21:29

mdpc

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By the way, I noticed that this was occurring from my Mac OS X Lion ssh settings. I edited /etc/ssh_config file and commented SendEnv LANG LC_*. It solved my problem. – Cem Oct 28 '11 at 12:30
@Cem Thanks for the tip, this indeed fixes it on Mac OS X Lion. – Zsolt Török Apr 15 '13 at 07:37

gnrfan · Answer 4 · 2014-08-20T17:08:45.950

2

What worked for me was adding a symlink in the CentOS server like this:

ln -s /usr/lib/locale/en_US.utf8 /usr/lib/locale/UTF-8

Once you do that commands like this work:

export LC_CTYPE=UTF-8

If you don't, this last command fails with this error:

-bash: warning: setlocale: LC_CTYPE: cannot change locale (UTF-8): No such file or directory

Now, an even simpler solution is just adding this line to /etc/bashrc in the server:

export LC_CTYPE="en_US.utf8"

edited Aug 20 '14 at 17:08

answered Aug 20 '14 at 17:00

gnrfan

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Thanks for the input! this worked really great. Finally able to remove that annoying comment... – cristobal Aug 26 '14 at 11:04

Kaalahaan · Answer 5 · 2015-10-09T09:38:11.980

I've got this specific message, when login from a Solaris X to a Centos host.

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

The problem is coming from 2 settings:

In my default system ssh_config, I ask the system to pass those variable.

Send locale-related environment variables SendEnv LANG LC_CTYPE LC_NUMERIC LC_TIME LC_COLLATE LC_MONETARY LC_MESSAGES

On my source host, thoses settings was set this way:

SOURCE# LANG= LC_CTYPE=fr_FR.UTF-8 LC_NUMERIC=fr_FR.UTF-8 LC_TIME=fr_FR.UTF-8 LC_COLLATE=fr_FR.UTF-8 LC_MONETARY=fr_FR.UTF-8 LC_MESSAGES=fr.UTF-8 LC_ALL=

But, as you can see, the LC_MESSAGES, is set to fr.UTF-8, which is not an option on my destination host.

 DEST#locale -a | grep fr_FR
 fr_FR
 fr_FR@euro
 fr_FR.iso88591
 fr_FR.iso885915@euro
 fr_FR.utf8

The problem was solved forcing on my source host, on .bash_profile: # export LC_ALL=fr_FR.UTF-8 export LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8

I could have solved it by asking my dest host not to take this variable from any ssh connection (generally, or by creating a locale ssh_config file for my user)

Thomas Vincent · Answer 6 · 2015-05-25T08:27:08.570

1

This was my fix in the past for locale errors.

Run the following: locale-gen

Then edit /etc/locale.gen. Make sure the following is uncommented:

en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8  
en_US ISO-8859-1  

generate locale

locale-gen

edited May 25 '15 at 08:27

answered Oct 12 '11 at 21:37

Thomas Vincent

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score 1 · Answer 7 · edited Nov 06 '12 at 17:18

1

On a local Centos 6.2 system: This did not help:

localedef -i en_US -f UTF-8 en_US.UTF-8

This worked:

localedef --no-archive -i en_US -f UTF-8 en_US.UTF-8

I also deleted locale-archive in /usr/lib/locale. I do not know if this was necessary.

edited Nov 06 '12 at 17:18

chutz

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answered Mar 06 '12 at 19:24

BobM

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score 1 · Answer 8 · answered Mar 24 '17 at 19:26

1

With Iterm2, is different.
Go to Iterm2 -> Preferences, Then Go to Profiles tab, and choose the Terminal tab from the bottom.
Go to Environment category, and unmark;

Set locale variables automatically

Finally, close and start a new session.

answered Mar 24 '17 at 19:26

crsuarezf

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score 0 · Answer 9 · answered Sep 12 '20 at 14:10

0

On my CentOS 8 (minimal server installation) I successfully set my locale variables like this.

Either

echo 'LANG="en_US.UTF-8"' > /etc/locale.conf

OR

echo 'LC_ALL="en_US.utf8"' > /etc/locale.conf

Relogon and call locale to verify the result.

answered Sep 12 '20 at 14:10

MrCalvin

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score 0 · Answer 10 · edited Oct 06 '13 at 12:43

0

and make sure LC_ALL="en_US.UTF-8" is in or added to the /etc/sysconifg/i18n

example content

LANG="en_GB.UTF-8"
SYSFONT="latarcyrheb-sun16"
LC_ALL="en_US.UTF-8"

edited Oct 06 '13 at 12:43

Pothi Kalimuthu

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answered Oct 06 '13 at 07:14

mayod

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score -3 · Answer 11 · edited Sep 25 '14 at 14:27

-3

edit /etc/sysconfig/i18n

Change LANG="us" to LANG="en_US"

Save and exit, log out and back in.

edited Sep 25 '14 at 14:27

Rex

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answered Sep 25 '14 at 14:22

NateDJ

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CentOS 6 and locale error

11 Answers11

Simple way:

Linked