I've had trouble getting the locale set up on various new servers I have had to configure. For some reason, it seems the latest debian (4, etch, or whatever it is called) is not so nice in this respect, especially if you are configuring for something other than us_EN.

I'm used to doing dpkg-reconfigure localeconf and everything works, but not anymore.

But I seem to have resolved my issues. So, in case this helps anyone, I will post my notes on getting the locale configured for a new debian/ubuntu box. (The thing that used to work with dpkg-reconfigure localedonf, but doesn't anymore.)

There are probably some mistakes here, I didn't edit it so well. Sorry, but hopefully still some help.

***************

Sorry the following "instructions" are a bit impressionistic. I'm not completely clear what got the environment sorted out, and I've run out of places to test it. But do something along these lines, and you'll probably be okay.

Debian / Ubuntu

de_DE@euro env var should be:

duo2:~# echo de_DE@euro
de_DE@euro

You may need to change /etc/environment to achieve this, then log out and log back in.

duo2:~# cat /etc/environment
#LANG="de_DE.UTF-8"
LANG=de_DE@euro
duo2:~#

You should be able to run the following command without errors

$ perl -e

Hopefully de_DE@euro is already configured as locale. But if not try

dpkg-reconfigure localeconf
and/or
dpkg-reconfigure locales

If that fails, try

apt-get install localeconf
and/or
apt-get install locales

and then try dpkg-reconfigure again.

In dpkg-reconfigure, you get some interactive menus

For default system locale. choose: de_DE@euro ISO-8859-15
Environment settings that should override the default locale: LC_MESSAGES (so star this and nothing else)
default system message locale: de_DE@euro ISO-8859-15
(or on some systems, en_IE@euro ISO-8859-15 also seems to work.
why sometimes de_DE and sometimes en_IE? don't know.

The above configuration steps seem to have changed with later versions of debian/ubuntu. The process has gotten simpler. (Fewer screens to fill out.)

Other impressionistic tips:

# not sure this is really necessary
# $ apt-get install language-pack-de-base language-pack-en-base
# $ pico /etc/environment
# LANG und LC_MESSAGES setzen (sofern LC_MESSAGES ne andere sprache als LANG sein soll)
# dpkg-reconfigure locales

Good luck, pilgrim.

I use this
It sets the proper things in /etc/environment.
The best is to use UTF8 if your applications support it (because a good part of etch does support utf8).

my /etc/environment:
LANG="fr_FR.UTF-8"