Bug #1028
[installation guide]: mandb: can't set the locale; make sure $LC_* and $LANG are correct
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Description
I'm currently trying to install Parabola into a VM using QEMU on an ArchLinux box to try it out prior to wiping my drive and starting fresh (note: I am aware that Parabola can be installed directly atop of Arch, but I want to redo my partitions anyway, hence starting from scratch).
Following the Installation Guide first and then Beginner's Guide to confirm I'm not missing any steps, I had partitioned and formatted the drive as needed, selected mirrors, and ran pacstrap /mnt base base-devel.
All packages were downloaded and installed fine. The error ocurred while running post-transaction hooks...
:: Running post-transaction hooks...
(1/4) Updating manpage index...
mandb: can't set the locale; make sure $LC_* and $LANG are correct
At this point, the pacstrap command appears to hang. At first, I let it go for roughly 5 - 10 minutes before I hit Ctrl+C, at which point the pacstrap resumes and completes what appears to be successfully. While working on the bug report, something told me to triple check it truly hung, and sure enough, a top command in a separate tty showed that the manpage generation pid was still working (in quiet mode) and it eventually completed on its own, though it took roughly 15 minutes (most likely due to running in a VM and limiting the system's access to only 512MB RAM and no swap).
Running locale shows that everything except for LC_ALL appears to be set as anticipated (forgive any typos: I couldn't figure out how to copy/paste from QEMU, so I retyped everything for your review):
root@parabolaiso ~ # locale
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=
root@parabolaiso ~ #
Despite the ultimately successful installation, I decided to still post the bug report due to the error message itself and what appears to be hanging afterwards. Others less familiar with Linux may think (as I initially had) that the system hung, so it may be a good idea to figure out what's causing the error and attempt to remediate confusion for those who attempt to install in the future.
Thank you very much.
History
Updated by lukeshu almost 8 years ago
You either didn't uncomment en_US.UTF-8 in /etc/locale.gen, or didn't run locale-gen after doing so.
Of course, if /etc/locale.gen is being created by pacstrap, and it's the same packstrap command that is generating the warnings, then the issue is that pacstrap doesn't correctly handle when the calling LANG != C. But then, if LANG=en_US.UTF-8 by default on the install CD, then that is a bug with our install media.
Updated by jazzyeagle almost 8 years ago
lukeshu wrote:
You either didn't uncomment en_US.UTF-8 in /etc/locale.gen, or didn't run locale-gen after doing so.
Of course, if /etc/locale.gen is being created by pacstrap, and it's the same packstrap command that is generating the warnings, then the issue is that pacstrap doesn't correctly handle when the calling LANG != C. But then, if LANG=en_US.UTF-8 by default on the install CD, then that is a bug with our install media.
The pacstrap command is prior to the instructions to run locale-gen in both guides, so this issue relates to whatever defaults are set up for the installation iso.
Updated by bill-auger over 6 years ago
- Subject changed from mandb: can't set the locale; make sure $LC_* and $LANG are correct to [installation guide]: mandb: can't set the locale; make sure $LC_* and $LANG are correct
- Project changed from Installation Media to Documentation
moving to documentation as it seems the OP was not using an installer