How do I change the default locale in Ubuntu Server?

Question

I have a remote server which I installed and have been trying to unsuccessfully change the locale to french for a few hours. Below are the contents of my locale files:

/etc/default/locale:

LANG="fr_FR.UTF-8"
LANGUAGE="fr_FR.UTF-8"
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_FR.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="fr_FR.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="fr_FR.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="fr_FR.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="fr_FR.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="fr_FR.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="fr_FR.UTF-8"
LC_ALL="fr_FR.UTF-8

/var/lib/locales/supported.d/local:

fr_FR.UTF-8 UTF-8
en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8
en_GB ISO-8859-1
en_GB.UTF-8 UTF-8
en_GB.ISO-8859-15 ISO-8859-15
fr_BE.UTF-8 UTF-8
fr_CA.UTF-8 UTF-8
fr_CH.UTF-8 UTF-8
fr_LU.UTF-8 UTF-8
fr_FR ISO-8859-1

Everything is still defaulting to english dates and the $ currency in my web app. Is there something else I'm overlooking? I should also mention that I have dpkg re-configured and restarted the server after changes were made.

score 81 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:14

81

Run the command locale - it should show your current locale.

Generate the locales for french:

sudo locale-gen fr_FR
sudo locale-gen fr_FR.UTF-8

Also, try regenerating the supported locale list by running:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales

And update/change the current default locale:

sudo update-locale LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8

Update

Extra steps to try:

Try:

sudo update-locale LANG="fr_FR.UTF-8" LANGUAGE="fr_FR"
sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales

Perhaps adding LANG and LANGUAGE in /etc/environment could force a change. Try logout/login or rebooting.
locale will show your current locale for the current user. Perhaps it's worth checking out these files just to be sure no local language variables are set: ~/.profile ~/.bashrc ~/.bash_profile

More info:

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:14

Community

1

answered Dec 23 '11 at 13:37

Savvas Radevic

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1

Jus a quick question. Does the system need to be restarted for changes to take effect? – Dark Star1 Jan 19 '12 at 11:41
2

I think a logout/login should do it – Savvas Radevic Jan 20 '12 at 00:57
wish it did. I ended up having to hardcode the values into the app and updating – Dark Star1 Jan 20 '12 at 02:26
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try `sudo update-locale LANG="fr_FR.UTF-8" LANGUAGE="fr_FR"` and `sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales`. Finally, perhaps adding LANG and LANGUAGE in `/etc/environment` could force a change. Try rebooting, maybe it's required for server services. :) – Savvas Radevic Jan 20 '12 at 07:57
Also found this question and website that could prove useful: http://serverfault.com/questions/228474/correctly-changing-default-locale-in-ubuntu-server-10-04-lts - https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Locale – Savvas Radevic Jan 20 '12 at 08:01
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`sudo update-locale var=locale` and restart worked for me in ubuntu server 16.04. – Daniel Apr 29 '16 at 16:33
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@DarkStar1 About restarting the system, I had to restart. – Alfonso Nishikawa Apr 17 '18 at 17:16
languages in .bashrc was the problem. This was a tricky one to find. Changing the language, then just close and restart the terminal emulator, it works. – ttoine Jan 07 '20 at 11:08
worked well! Thank you :) – systemdebt May 08 '20 at 03:54

score 11 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 30 '19 at 19:56

11

You also have to edit /etc/profile:

export LANG="en_US.utf8"
export LANGUAGE="en_US.utf8"
export LC_ALL="en_US.utf8"

answered Jan 30 '19 at 19:56

Witek

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Weird how few people mention this. Thanks! – Martin Bramwell Aug 06 '22 at 10:48

score 9 · Answer 3 · edited Jan 31 '19 at 00:46

9

I tried everything from sudo locale-gen and sudo update-locale to sudo update-locale, and manually making entries in /etc/default/locale and /etc/environment with and without restarting.

Nothing seemed to work and my Python code was still throwing a Unicode error on Ubuntu 18.04l. Finally modifying the environment variable in ~/.bashrc worked.

export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

Of course don't forget to source ~/.bashrc

I know it's not the recommended way, but nothing else worked for me.

edited Jan 31 '19 at 00:46

karel

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answered Jan 19 '19 at 18:10

Abhimanu Kumar

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Of course this then has to be done to *every* user's .bashrc and also be added to the skelton for new users..... – mckenzm May 23 '19 at 04:13
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All the above solutions didn't work only this one worked for my Elixir setup on Ubuntu 18 docker container. Thanks – xs2rashid Mar 18 '20 at 16:42

How do I change the default locale in Ubuntu Server?

3 Answers3

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