How to properly set a locale on endeavouros?

General system Newbie
1

hey!
during the installation of endeavouros i made the mistake of setting everything to the en_us locale. this is a bad experience because of the am/pm nonsense and i want my c locale back.
i tried some changes.
locale.gen has:

en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8 #added by calamares
C.UTF-8 UTF-8 #added manually, is that good?

locale.conf:

LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE=C.UTF-8
LC_NUMERIC=C.UTF-8
LC_TIME=C.UTF-8
LC_COLLATE=C.UTF-8
LC_MONETARY=C.UTF-8
LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8
LC_PAPER=C.UTF-8
LC_NAME=C.UTF-8
LC_ADDRESS=C.UTF-8
LC_TELEPHONE=C.UTF-8
LC_MEASUREMENT=C.UTF-8
LC_IDENTIFICATION=C.UTF-8

then i sudo locale-gen but i cannot get my c locale back. i’m sure i have the c locale since locale -a returns:

C
C.utf8
en_US.utf8
POSIX

even after a reboot locale still returns

LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="en_US.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=

is endeavour overriding the locale somewhere or am i messing up? i don’t want to become american by prolonged exposure to their locale, pls help.
i’m on i3 but not the automatic install, i installed without a desktop and added i3 manually. my display manager is ly.

1 Like
2

C.UTF-8 UTF-8 is not right.

Use the same syntax what you should have in /etc/locale.gen, there should be your country and language acronyms too:

# /etc/local.gen (partially)
en_GB.UTF-8 UTF-8
en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8
#  etc.


# /etc/locale.conf (choose your location)
LANG=en_US.UTF-8

Then run

sudo locale-gen
1 Like
3

i specifically want to set C (or preferably, utf8 equivalent of C) on everything except LANG, not my country’s locale, but i can’t find a C locale in /etc/locale.gen so i added it.
that’s what confuses me, i followed the syntax but with C and it didn’t work.

4

I think if you select no locale in locale.gen and run locale-gen it will default to C.UTF-8, but I could be wrong. At least that is how the archiso tools build the ISO. There is a locale.conf file in /etc with one line:

LANG=C.UTF-8

5

Not sure but try on terminal

export LC_ALL=C
export LANG="your-setting"

Is something like this what you are aiming at?

6

that did not seem to work, leaving it empty just left it empty.
i tried putting

LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE=C.UTF-8
LC_NUMERIC=C.UTF-8
LC_TIME=C.UTF-8
LC_COLLATE=C.UTF-8
LC_MONETARY=C.UTF-8
LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8
LC_PAPER=C.UTF-8
LC_NAME=C.UTF-8
LC_ADDRESS=C.UTF-8
LC_TELEPHONE=C.UTF-8
LC_MEASUREMENT=C.UTF-8
LC_IDENTIFICATION=C.UTF-8

in my locale.conf (using syntax from your LANG=C.UTF-8 example) and it worked if i sudo locale-gen and then source /etc/profile.d/locale.sh but the settings were reverted to all en_US after a reboot.

7

export LC_ALL=C.UTF-8; export LANG="en_US.UTF-8" is exactly what i’m looking for but when i set those settings in my locale.conf i lose them after a reboot and it’s back to en_US again.

8

Does it work if you write those two variables into /etc/locale.conf and regenerate?

Edit: sorry, looks like you did that already.

Locale settings can be tricky. Maybe man localectl could help? It says you may need to update initrd if using dracut.

9

now this is weird, localectl shows the new correct values while locale shows the old ones. the system uses the old ones (date shows with am/pm)
i guess i’ll try regenerating initrd then and see if that helps

10

i updated initrd with dracut and that did not help either.

11

I was having a very similar issue about a month ago when I did a new install of EOS on a new machine. I’ll try and look through my command history to see what it was that finally worked.

1 Like
12

I’m the mean time, not to be rude, but have you looked at the Arch wiki for locale?

13

yeah, i read it but i couldn’t figure it out. the closest i got is that unset LANG && source /etc/profile.d/locale.sh in the “2.3 make locale changes immediate” section helps temporarily, until reboot.

14

Just noticed this :point_up:. Missed it the first time. :rofl::rofl::rofl:

15

Yes, those aren’t permanent.

16

Okay, some of this may be a repeat of what you did before, so my apologies.

What’s the output of
localectl list-locales?
and
localectl status?

Is there any chance that you have a file ~/.local/locale.conf? If so, this could be causing a conflict. It’s not always there, so don’t be surprised if it’s not.

The interesting thing is that whatever you save to your /etc/locale.conf should be saved and not revert upon reboot.

@eznix is correct, if no locale is set, the system should revert to C.UTF-8

17 
$ localectl list-locales
C.UTF-8
en_US.UTF-8

$ localectl status
System Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8
               LC_CTYPE=C.UTF-8
               LC_NUMERIC=C.UTF-8
               LC_TIME=C.UTF-8
               LC_COLLATE=C.UTF-8
               LC_MONETARY=C.UTF-8
               LC_PAPER=C.UTF-8
               LC_NAME=C.UTF-8
               LC_ADDRESS=C.UTF-8
               LC_TELEPHONE=C.UTF-8
               LC_MEASUREMENT=C.UTF-8
               LC_IDENTIFICATION=C.UTF-8
    VC Keymap: us
   X11 Layout: us

(despite this, the locale command shows en_US.UTF-8 on everything and that’s what the system also uses)
i don’t have a ~/.local/locale.conf

18

Thank you.

What about locale -a?

19 
$ locale -a
C
C.utf8
en_US.utf8
POSIX
1 Like
20

Okay. Do you want to completely remove the en_US.UTF-8?

My understanding is that using C.UTF-8 only works with LC_ALL, but I do not fully understand why; so I cannot give a better explanation.

What about cat /etc/locale.conf and cat /etc/locale.gen and cat /etc/default/locale?