Core installation should set proper locale for Unicode characters.

[GirlBossRush]

I battled with Unicode character issues for about a week and found the solution to my troubles. My chroot installation is the core package and I use Crosh Window to login. I use ZSH as my shell with Oh-My-ZSH and the default theme has a Unicode arrow next to the command line. Tab completion would duplicate the text on the screen until I found that the locale was not set. Running:

sudo locale-gen en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8
sudo update-locale LANG="en_US.UTF-8"

Will fix the issue for good. I'm not sure if it's possible to include this fix in the installation or at least document the issue for other users.

[dnschneid]

That almost certainly should go into the install, probably in post-common. I'll look into it. Thanks for figuring this out!

Do you have to set LANG when you enter the chroot later, or does it grab it by default?

[dnschneid]

I had to run sudo locale-gen en_US.UTF-8 (no UTF-8 second parameter) for it to actually generate the locale and for the second command to work. This is on Quantal--which is yours?

[GirlBossRush]

I'm on Precise. I've pieced these commands from a number of StackOverflow posts so YMMV. LANG seems to get set automatically now that the locale is generated.

[x3qt]

Also, do not forget to set "LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8".

[GirlBossRush]

I haven't had any issues with LC_ALL not set. What does it fix?

[x3qt]

Depends on order, so it preferable to be set explicitely. Not everyone lives in the US or uses the english language as the default.

Example of /etc/default/locale:

LANG="en_UK.UTF-8"
LC_ALL="en_US.UTF-8"

See for an additional info - https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Locale

[tedm]

A work around I've done is to put my LANG= and LC_ALL= in my home .profile and .bashrc

use export in front of if necessary.

set and printenv show them set.

When I did the standard global profile commands (for debian/ubuntu), I got "POSIX" for all of the variables.

[dnschneid]

Fixed in master, thanks to @x3qt.

[torsava]

The problem persists, and it's a bit different to solve it on Debian sid:

• Open file /etc/locale.gen in your favourite text editor.
• Uncomment line "# en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8" and save file.
• sudo locale-gen
• sudo update-locale LANG="en_US.UTF-8"
• sudo update-locale LC_ALL="en_US.UTF-8"

That should do it. Happy chrooting!

[0xMF]

As there was no file /etc/locale.gen in the default install of Debian sid (xfce4), I solved this issue as follows:

1. Add locales to Debian sid and configure

• sudo apt install locales
• sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales
• In the dialog that appears: Select "en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8" and click OK

2. Update xfce4-terminal settings to show Unicode (Edit->Preferences->Advanced->Encoding and select UTF-8).