[Solved] Error "mandb: can't set the locale" during installation.

Aohn · 2016-05-26 09:00:01

This is a problem or can be safely ignored?

:: Running post-transaction hooks...
(1/3) Updating manpage index...
mandb: can't set the locale; make sure $LC_* and $LANG are correct
(2/3) Updating the info directory file...
(3/3) Rebuilding certificate stores...
pacstrap /mnt base grub  20.93s user 27.38s system 18% cpu 4:26.06 total
root@archiso ~ # locale -a
C
en_US.utf8
POSIX
root@archiso ~ # localectl 
   System Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8
       VC Keymap: n/a
      X11 Layout: n/a
root@archiso ~ # grep -v '^#' /etc/locale.*
/etc/locale.conf:LANG=en_US.UTF-8
/etc/locale.gen:en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8

Archiso from 2016.05.01. Full log.

Last edited by Aohn (2016-05-31 10:36:19)

madpierre · 2016-05-28 22:52:34

What's the output of $ cat /etc/locale.conf ?

Last edited by madpierre (2016-05-28 22:53:45)

WorMzy · 2016-05-28 23:07:53

LANG=en_US.UTF-8

Should probably be

LANG=en_US.utf8

in locale.conf.

madpierre · 2016-05-29 05:55:54

Right WorMzy. Duh is my only excuse. Would you buy it's the new glasses?

FWIW, "LANG=en_US.UTF-8" is the correct format.

Aohn, your locale is set. Give it a go. Probably not an issue. In other words, fly it and watch it.

Last edited by madpierre (2016-05-30 12:13:56)

xxdoctorhousexx · 2016-05-30 09:37:44

Hello everyone,

i have a similar problem...
each time i run an update/install something that probably needs some compiling (i presume...) i always see this mandb: can't set the locale; make sure $LC_* and $LANG are correct

The following mandb error is from today's logs but it's been a while since i have been trying to get rid of it

[2016-05-30 09:16] [PACMAN] Running 'pacman -Syu'
[2016-05-30 09:16] [PACMAN] synchronizing package lists
[2016-05-30 09:16] [PACMAN] starting full system upgrade
[2016-05-30 09:16] [ALPM] transaction started
[2016-05-30 09:16] [ALPM] upgraded cantor (16.04.1-1 -> 16.04.1-2)
[2016-05-30 09:16] [ALPM] upgraded ffmpegthumbs (16.04.1-1 -> 16.04.1-2)
[2016-05-30 09:16] [ALPM] upgraded kate (16.04.1-1 -> 16.04.1-2)
[2016-05-30 09:16] [ALPM] upgraded keepass (2.32-1 -> 2.33-1)
[2016-05-30 09:16] [ALPM] upgraded kpmcore (2.1.1-1 -> 2.2.0-1)
[2016-05-30 09:16] [ALPM] upgraded kwrite (16.04.1-1 -> 16.04.1-2)
[2016-05-30 09:16] [ALPM] upgraded mpg123 (1.22.4-1 -> 1.23.3-1)
[2016-05-30 09:16] [ALPM] upgraded partitionmanager (2.1.0-2 -> 2.2.0-1)
[2016-05-30 09:16] [ALPM] upgraded wavpack (4.75.2-1 -> 4.80.0-1)
[2016-05-30 09:16] [ALPM] transaction completed
[2016-05-30 09:16] [ALPM] running 'gtk-update-icon-cache.hook'...
[2016-05-30 09:16] [ALPM] running 'man-db.hook'...
[2016-05-30 09:16] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] mandb: can't set the locale; make sure $LC_* and $LANG are correct

the output of the locale command (notice the error)

locale
locale: Cannot set LC_ALL to default locale: No such file or directory
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC=it_IT.UTF-8
LC_TIME=mn_CN.UTF-8
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY=it_IT.UTF-8
LC_MESSAGES=C
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=it_IT.UTF-8
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=

the output of locale -a

C
en_US.utf8
POSIX

my /etc/locale.conf

LANG=en_US.UTF-8

I have been using the chinese date format as in my opinion it's more efficient and kind of more "sorting friendly". and the measurement, monetary and numeric are the italian ones (because i am italian...)

I have been googling a lot and so far i haven't been able to find a suitable solution to this...
I have tried:

Reinstalling glibc
to regenerate locales with locale-gen
to export LANG=en_US.UTF-8 and LC_MESSAGES="C" in .bashrc as suggested somewhere

I am running out of solutions at the moment and since i have been unsuccessfully trying to solve this for a while, well, i thought about turning to you guys...

I hope we can find a solution to this.

thanks in advance

krabat · 2016-05-30 10:11:09

At least one reason for this problem is pacman getting invoked with a locale that just doesn't exist. This is by default happening in the installer right now, see https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/49426, and definitely the problem of the OP ("root@archiso...").

Directives like LANG="en_US.UTF-8" in /etc/locale.conf are alright, see man 5 locale.conf. It's just the output of 'locale -a' where this gets condensed to en_US.utf8.

@xxdoctorhousexx
At first glance I think it's the same problem at your side. You're setting among other locales it_IT.UTF-8 and mn_CN.UTF-8 but these haven't been generated yet, see output of 'locale -a'. So uncommenting these locales in /etc/locale.gen and running 'locale-gen' plus rebooting should fix the problem.
Otherwise you may drop the means which is currently setting the Chinese and Italian locale and reboot to track this down further.

Last edited by krabat (2016-05-30 10:11:55)

zyxnull · 2016-05-31 02:52:40

Edit /etc/locale.gen file and uncomment your desired locales such as:

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

Save the file, then run locale-gen

xxdoctorhousexx · 2016-05-31 07:41:19

Thanks guys, i did the uncommenting but i have found something strange look:

Let's start with my Plasma regional settings:

http://s33.postimg.org/cdplgyudb/Screen … 091209.jpg

I have those settings because for professional reasons i have to use italian currency symbol, numeric and metric system but i kept the region set as US otherwise lots of sites are displayed in italian and i don't like it (need to keep my english skill well honed ) and you already know the story of the more efficient time system; speaking of which, time says mn_CN so in the locale.gen i should find the same or something similar to that... and yet... there is no mn_CN

look:

#mg_MG ISO-8859-15
#mhr_RU UTF-8
#mi_NZ.UTF-8 UTF-8
#mi_NZ ISO-8859-13
#mk_MK.UTF-8 UTF-8
#mk_MK ISO-8859-5
#ml_IN UTF-8
#mn_MN UTF-8
#mni_IN UTF-8
#mr_IN UTF-8
#ms_MY.UTF-8 UTF-8
#ms_MY ISO-8859-1
#mt_MT.UTF-8 UTF-8
#mt_MT ISO-8859-3
#my_MM UTF-8

should be around there... but it's not there... there is a mn_MN do you think it's the same?

at the cost of repeating myself, my locale output (part of it) is:

locale
locale: Cannot set LC_ALL to default locale: No such file or directory
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC=it_IT.UTF-8
LC_TIME=mn_CN.UTF-8
...

there is no match between the time format displayed here and the those present in the locale.gen file... could this be a small bug? if so, how do i correct it?

i hope my reasoning makes sense...

thanks guys

Last edited by xxdoctorhousexx (2016-05-31 08:03:50)

jasonwryan · 2016-05-31 07:44:59

Read the Forum Etiquette and only post thumbnails http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/For … s_and_code

xxdoctorhousexx · 2016-05-31 08:04:30

sorry... i stand guilty...

Aohn · 2016-05-31 09:04:09

krabat wrote:

At least one reason for this problem is pacman getting invoked with a locale that just doesn't exist. This is by default happening in the installer right now, see https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/49426

Thanks. I should check bugtracker.

krabat wrote:

and definitely the problem of the OP ("root@archiso...").

I thought it was clear because this is "installation" section. But it seems that not.

krabat · 2016-05-31 09:04:22

@xxdoctorhousexx
The screenshot in your second to last comment is displaying GUI "System Settings" of KDE. It is dealing with the localization settings of KDE only, these are completely independent of the system C locale we've been discussing so far.

Mind letting us know whether the problem depicted in your first posting was solved by the hints you were given?

@Aohn
It was indeed actually clear due to the section. I was only meaning to stress that the output was from the running installer as well which may have been superfluous. But no worries, all this isn't a problem at all.

Last edited by krabat (2016-05-31 09:11:38)

xxdoctorhousexx · 2016-05-31 14:40:05

Thanks for the answer, i have tried uncommenting the appropriate locales but i have stumbled upon a problem (so now we have 2... one standing between the keyboard and the chair and the other one is...).
Some reasoning: you have clearly stated that the image i posted are the KDE system locales am i correct? you have also stated that those settings are different from the system C locales. So my second attempt to correct the error was to chance the mn_CN in the KDE gui to italian. Appearently that worked, as my locale output reads:

[doctorhouse@AsusNotebook ~]$ locale 
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC=it_IT.UTF-8
LC_TIME=it_IT.UTF-8
LC_COLLATE=C
LC_MONETARY=it_IT.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=it_IT.UTF-8                                                                                                                                                                                     
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.UTF-8"                                                                                                                                                                                
LC_ALL=

no errors in sight. Now i humbly point out that this change reflected on the locale settings which at this point i totally fail at understanding... i will do some RTFM'ing... (i am rather new to Arch...) Yet, i changed that parameters and no errors were reported... so: i assume that if i change something in the regional settings in KDE those changes are reflected in the locale command output; Using the Star Trek citation: "Logic dictates" (LTC Spock ) that there is(most likely) an error in the mn_CN suggested by KDE as it doesn't exist in the locale.gen where we can find instead mn_MN.UTF-8; this discrepancy most likely caused the error in my case.
Apparently by changing the time system to Italian solved my problem. Although i'd like to test my solution and please, if you have this info, can you tell me a couple of packages that should require an update of the mandb so i can verify my hypothesis?

Thanks again for the help.

Arch Linux

#1 2016-05-26 09:00:01

[Solved] Error "mandb: can't set the locale" during installation.

#2 2016-05-28 22:52:34

Re: [Solved] Error "mandb: can't set the locale" during installation.

#3 2016-05-28 23:07:53

Re: [Solved] Error "mandb: can't set the locale" during installation.

#4 2016-05-29 05:55:54

Re: [Solved] Error "mandb: can't set the locale" during installation.

#5 2016-05-30 09:37:44

Re: [Solved] Error "mandb: can't set the locale" during installation.

#6 2016-05-30 10:11:09

Re: [Solved] Error "mandb: can't set the locale" during installation.

#7 2016-05-31 02:52:40

Re: [Solved] Error "mandb: can't set the locale" during installation.

#8 2016-05-31 07:41:19

Re: [Solved] Error "mandb: can't set the locale" during installation.

#9 2016-05-31 07:44:59

Re: [Solved] Error "mandb: can't set the locale" during installation.

#10 2016-05-31 08:04:30

Re: [Solved] Error "mandb: can't set the locale" during installation.

#11 2016-05-31 09:04:09

Re: [Solved] Error "mandb: can't set the locale" during installation.

#12 2016-05-31 09:04:22

Re: [Solved] Error "mandb: can't set the locale" during installation.

#13 2016-05-31 14:40:05

Re: [Solved] Error "mandb: can't set the locale" during installation.

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