[Techtalk] Quick question, I hope?

[Wim De Smet]

Hi,

On Dec 19, 2007 11:11 PM, Figaro <ynegorp at charter.net> wrote:
> Hello all.
> I need to use a Debian system for a few days that is not my own,
> therefore has some configs. that are quite different than one is used
> to. What I need to do is reset system wide locale. I have done the
> dpkg-reconfigure locales, and locale-gel all (as root), rebooted.

dpkg-reconfigure locales should generate locales. What is Locale-gel?
(localegen maybe?) I don't have anything like that on my system, but
it's a bit more current.


> -------------------snip---------------------------------------------------------------------
> OUTPUT of: #locale
> ------------------snip----------------------
> > LANG=
> > LC_CTYPE="POSIX"
> > LC_NUMERIC="POSIX"
> > LC_TIME="POSIX"
> > LC_COLLATE="POSIX"
> > LC_MONETARY="POSIX"
> > LC_MESSAGES="POSIX"
> > LC_PAPER="POSIX"
> > LC_NAME="POSIX"
> > LC_ADDRESS="POSIX"
> > LC_TELEPHONE="POSIX"
> > LC_MEASUREMENT="POSIX"
> > LC_IDENTIFICATION="POSIX"
> > LC_ALL=

"POSIX" is not a valid locale on my system. This might be causing the problem.

> So I need a quick and dirty method to get this reset and get my work
> done. I will be scrubbing the system after the reports are written and
> submitted. A complete new system will then be installed and set up.. but
> I need to use this sys. to get the work done now.

dpkg-reconfigure locales should ask you (if not, try adding -plow).
Set the default locale to "none", that should just make everything
fallback on sane defaults. If it doesn't, try setting LC_ALL to 'C' so
do export LC_ALL=C in a console, before starting a program from that
console, you might also have to set LANG. On newer versions of Debian
the locale gets written to /etc/environment I think. If you have that
you could try changing it there as well (this is what dpkg-reconfigure
should be doing).

greets,
Wim