setuptools pip wheel failed with error code 1

[tgdn]

I am following this guide from DigitalOcean on their servers on Ubuntu 14.04.
When trying to install the certificate with
./letsencrypt-auto certonly --webroot --webroot-path /usr/share/nginx/html -d mysite.com -d www.mysite.com

I get the following:

Bootstrapping dependencies for Debian-based OSes...
...
...
dialog is already the newest version.
gcc is already the newest version.
python is already the newest version.
python-dev is already the newest version.
augeas-lenses is already the newest version.
ca-certificates is already the newest version.
libaugeas0 is already the newest version.
libffi-dev is already the newest version.
libssl-dev is already the newest version.
python-virtualenv is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Checking for new version...
Creating virtual environment...
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/virtualenv.py", line 2316, in <module>
    main()
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/virtualenv.py", line 708, in main
    symlink=options.symlink)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/virtualenv.py", line 941, in create_environment
    download=download,
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/virtualenv.py", line 897, in install_wheel
    call_subprocess(cmd, show_stdout=False, extra_env=env, stdin=SCRIPT)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/virtualenv.py", line 792, in call_subprocess
    % (cmd_desc, proc.returncode))
OSError: Command /home/tgdn/.local/sh...ncrypt/bin/python2.7 - setuptools pip wheel failed with error code 1

For more information:

$ python -V
Python 2.7.6

$ pip -V
pip 8.1.1 from /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages (python 2.7)

This issue is related to this one #2850.

[starchy]

Confirmed this issue is present in Debian Jessie.

[thomasjonas]

Same problem here on Ubuntu 16.04... But with python 2.7.11+

[nyon]

I had the same problem on Ubuntu 16.04.

locale-gen "en_US.UTF-8"
export LC_ALL="en_US.UTF-8"

fixed it.

[melroy89]

Same issue with Debian Jessie. I could try the locale-gen above. But is this a workaround?

[bmw]

@Danger89, if you're on Debian Jessie, it is recommended to use the certbot packages from jessie-backports.

[melroy89]

@bmw I know however this one was also broken ;). See issue #1080
And:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=825830

[yan12125]

I've had some bad experiences with Python 2 + virtualenv + exotic locales. Once Python 3 is done (#4507), this issue may disappear as well.

EDIT: Notably, it's likely that UTF-8 is used everywhere in Python since 3.7, [1] so (hopefully) there won't be locale issues anymore.

[1] http://bugs.python.org/issue28180

[bmw]

I'm closing this as a duplicate of #2883 which has more comments.