warning: setlocale: LC_ALL: cannot change locale on foreign distro

warning: setlocale: LC_ALL: cannot change locale on foreign distro

[Jack Hill]

Hello Guix,

I'm setting up Guix on a foreign distro (CentOS 7). I'm working on getting 
locales right per section 2.6.1 of the manual. I have installed the 
guix-locales package in buth my user's and root's profile, and have 
restarted guix-daemon. However, when I run package installation 
opterations, I see the following message,

```
/gnu/store/q19l04vd2za80mk1845pz7r8cz29qk43-bash-minimal-4.4.23/bin/bash: warning: setlocale: LC_ALL: cannot change locale (en_US.utf8)
```

GUIX_LOCPATH is set to /home/jackhill/.guix-profile/lib/locale

What am I missing?

```
$ guix describe
Generation 2    Jun 03 2019 10:54:12    (current)
   guix 3092f1b
     repository URL: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/guix.git
     branch: master
     commit: 3092f1b835d79655eecb2f8a79dda20ad9ba6bd6
```

Thanks,
Jack

Re: warning: setlocale: LC_ALL: cannot change locale on foreign distro

[Jack Hill]

On Mon, 3 Jun 2019, Jack Hill wrote:

> Hello Guix,
>
> I'm setting up Guix on a foreign distro (CentOS 7). I'm working on getting 
> locales right per section 2.6.1 of the manual. I have installed the 
> guix-locales package in buth my user's and root's profile, and have restarted 
> guix-daemon. However, when I run package installation opterations, I see the 
> following message,
>
> ```
> /gnu/store/q19l04vd2za80mk1845pz7r8cz29qk43-bash-minimal-4.4.23/bin/bash: 
> warning: setlocale: LC_ALL: cannot change locale (en_US.utf8)
> ```

There appears to be two things going on here:

1) The default locale in the provided systemd unit, en_US.utf8, is not 
provided by the glibc-locales package but rather only by the 
glibc-utf8-locales package.

I think the fix for this would be to clarify which package should be 
installed in root's profile when installing on a systemd foreign distro.

2) The quoting in systemd unit is wrong. Changing

```
Environment=GUIX_LOCPATH='/var/guix/profiles/per-user/root/guix-profile/lib/locale' LC_ALL=en_US.utf8
```

to


```
Environment='GUIX_LOCPATH=/var/guix/profiles/per-user/root/guix-profile/lib/locale' LC_ALL=en_US.utf8
```

fixed the problem.

I'll open bugs for each of these issues.

Best,
Jack

Re: warning: setlocale: LC_ALL: cannot change locale on foreign distro

[Josh Holland]

Hi Guix,

It's only now I reply to this that I notice that it wasn't my thread I
was responding to, since I was having exactly the same problem.

On Mon, Jun 03, 2019 at 02:01:50PM -0400, Jack Hill wrote:
> 1) The default locale in the provided systemd unit, en_US.utf8, is not
> provided by the glibc-locales package but rather only by the
> glibc-utf8-locales package.

Installing glibc-utf8-locales has made the errors go away.

> 
> 2) The quoting in systemd unit is wrong. Changing
> 
> ```
> Environment=GUIX_LOCPATH='/var/guix/profiles/per-user/root/guix-profile/lib/locale' LC_ALL=en_US.utf8
> ```
> 
> to
> 
> 
> ```
> Environment='GUIX_LOCPATH=/var/guix/profiles/per-user/root/guix-profile/lib/locale' LC_ALL=en_US.utf8
> ```
> 
> fixed the problem.

I've made this change too, though it appeared to be fixed just by
installing glibc-utf8-profiles.

> 
> I'll open bugs for each of these issues.

Glad that these won't be a problem any more; thanks a lot!


-- 
Josh Holland

Re: warning: setlocale: LC_ALL: cannot change locale on foreign distro

[Jack Hill]

On Mon, 3 Jun 2019, Josh Holland wrote:

> Hi Guix,
>
> It's only now I reply to this that I notice that it wasn't my thread I
> was responding to, since I was having exactly the same problem.

I'm always releived to see other people having the same problem, and I'm 
not lost in some dark corner of computer problems where no one else 
ventures :)

> On Mon, Jun 03, 2019 at 02:01:50PM -0400, Jack Hill wrote:
>> 1) The default locale in the provided systemd unit, en_US.utf8, is not
>> provided by the glibc-locales package but rather only by the
>> glibc-utf8-locales package.
>
> Installing glibc-utf8-locales has made the errors go away.

Yay!

>> 2) The quoting in systemd unit is wrong. Changing
>>
>> ```
>> Environment=GUIX_LOCPATH='/var/guix/profiles/per-user/root/guix-profile/lib/locale' LC_ALL=en_US.utf8
>> ```
>>
>> to
>>
>>
>> ```
>> Environment='GUIX_LOCPATH=/var/guix/profiles/per-user/root/guix-profile/lib/locale' LC_ALL=en_US.utf8
>> ```
>>
>> fixed the problem.
>
> I've made this change too, though it appeared to be fixed just by
> installing glibc-utf8-profiles.

What foreign distro are you using? I wonder if the former works with some 
systemd versions, but not all.

>>
>> I'll open bugs for each of these issues.
>
> Glad that these won't be a problem any more; thanks a lot!

To close the loop, those issues are

https://issues.guix.info/issue/36074 and
https://issues.guix.info/issue/36076

While poking around the bugtracker, I noticed another one which is related 
to the whole situation:

https://issues.guix.info/issue/35671

Best,
Jack