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[solved] locale settings .dmrc causing desktop load problems

Posted: Fri Feb 01, 2013 5:24 pm
by mintbadger
Hi

I've had problems with my locale ever since I installed Mint14, with MATE desktop. I have been getting the error "Language en_GB does not exist; using system default" following boot. I want rid of this message and don't mind using en_US.

I've been trying various fixes and thought I'd try and set everything to en_US.
So I changed my etc/default/locale file to contain:

Code: Select all

LANG="en_US.UTF-8"
LANGUAGE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="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_ALL="en_US.UTF-8"
When I reboot however, this file is unchanged but looking at locale from the command line I get :
~ $ locale
LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=en_GB:en
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=en_US.UTF-8
It would appear that something is changing the LANG and LANGUAGE lines to GB. And my feeling is that the format of the second of these should be LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8 or at the least LANGUAGE=en_GB.UTF-8

What is changing locale LANG and LANGUAGE besides the etc/default/locale file?

Thanks
Mintbadger

Re: locale settings

Posted: Fri Feb 01, 2013 5:36 pm
by bb333
Make sure installed:

Code: Select all

$ locale -a
edit file back again, then:

Code: Select all

$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales 

Re: locale settings

Posted: Fri Feb 01, 2013 6:36 pm
by mintbadger
Hi

I have tried this already:
~ $ locale -a
C
C.UTF-8
en_AG
en_AG.utf8
en_AU.utf8
en_BW.utf8
en_CA.utf8
en_DK.utf8
en_GB.utf8
en_HK.utf8
en_IE.utf8
en_IN
en_IN.utf8
en_NG
en_NG.utf8
en_NZ.utf8
en_PH.utf8
en_SG.utf8
en_US.utf8
en_ZA.utf8
en_ZM
en_ZM.utf8
en_ZW.utf8
POSIX
zh_CN.utf8
zh_SG.utf8

$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales
[sudo] password for :
Generating locales...
en_AG.UTF-8... up-to-date
en_AU.UTF-8... up-to-date
en_BW.UTF-8... up-to-date
en_CA.UTF-8... up-to-date
en_DK.UTF-8... up-to-date
en_GB.UTF-8... up-to-date
en_HK.UTF-8... up-to-date
en_IE.UTF-8... up-to-date
en_IN.UTF-8... up-to-date
en_NG.UTF-8... up-to-date
en_NZ.UTF-8... up-to-date
en_PH.UTF-8... up-to-date
en_SG.UTF-8... up-to-date
en_US.UTF-8... up-to-date
en_ZA.UTF-8... up-to-date
en_ZM.UTF-8... up-to-date
en_ZW.UTF-8... up-to-date
Generation complete.
So the US locale is available and up to date.
However, I still get the same error that en_GB isn't available when I reboot and it would appear that something is overriding the en_US settings from the etc/default/locale file and replacing these with LANG=en_GB:en which is causing the error.

Have you any idea what could be doing this? MATE perhaps, or some other config file Mint is loading before boot?

Re: locale settings

Posted: Fri Feb 01, 2013 7:06 pm
by mintbadger
Okay, I used grep and found the following files in my home directory which contained en_GB
.dmrc
.pam_environment

They both have rogue looking LANGUAGE=en_GB:en and other lines in.

I guess it is one of these which is changing the locale settings from /etc/default/locale on boot

I'll try and change them and hopefully that will work...

Re: locale settings

Posted: Fri Feb 01, 2013 7:20 pm
by xenopeek
This may be relevant: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=111527. I also believe for similar sounding errors users have fixed it by setting their preferred language as the default on the login screen. I'd try that first.

Re: locale settings

Posted: Fri Feb 01, 2013 7:31 pm
by mintbadger
I got it!

$HOME/.dmrc has a line
Language=en_US:UTF-8
I found whatever I put instead of "en_US:UTF-8" was shown on the error before loading the desktop after boot.

I just commented out this line and the error has gone away. This file must have copied been copied when I upgraded from the last version of Mint.

I then switched back to en_GB and am good to go.

Thanks for your help.