Unable to correctly set the locale on Fedora-based distributions.

[peter-777]

Windows Version

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.22631.3593]

WSL Version

2.1.5.0

Are you using WSL 1 or WSL 2?

• WSL 2
• WSL 1

Kernel Version

5.15.146.1-2

Distro Version

Fedora 40 and Oracle Linux 9.1

Other Software

No response

Repro Steps

1. Set up a Fedora-based distribution such as Oracle Linux.
2. Enable systemd.
3. Execute the following commands:

sudo dnf install -y langpacks-ja
sudo localectl set-locale ja_JP.utf8

4. Log in again and execute a non-existent command.

Expected Behavior

$ aaa
-bash: aaa: コマンドが見つかりません

Actual Behavior

$ aaa
-bash: aaa: command not found

Diagnostic Logs

Here are the findings from the experiment:

1. By adding printenv LANG to the beginning of /etc/profile to check the variable, it shows en_US.UTF-8.

2. Strangely, when setting LANG in /etc/default/locale, the content is correctly reflected. If the file does not exist, it defaults to en_US.UTF-8.

Workaround:
Creating a symbolic link from /etc/locale.conf to /etc/default/locale resolves the issue.

[github-actions]

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[peter-777]

WslLogs-2024-05-22_18-16-27.zip

[github-actions]

Diagnostic information

.wslconfig found
	Custom kernel command line found: 'sysctl.net.ipv4.ping_group_range="0 2000" cgroup_no_v1=all'
Detected appx version: 2.1.5.0

[OneBlue]

@peter-777: What's the locale setting in Windows ?

WSL inherits that settings by default

[peter-777]

@OneBlue The locale setting for Windows is set to Japanese.

[OneBlue]

Interesting. Is systemd enabled in your distribution ? Can you share the output of cat /etc/wsl.conf ?

[peter-777]

Yes, systemd is enabled in my distribution. Here is the output of cat /etc/wsl.conf:

[boot]
systemd = True
command = "mount --make-rshared /"
[user]
default = myuser

[OneBlue]

Ok thank you @peter-777. Also, can you share how you installed that distribution ?

[peter-777]

@OneBlue
I have installed two distributions. Fedora is set as the default in WSL.
One of them is extracted from a Fedora container image and imported into WSL as a rootfs.

wsl --import fedora-40 .\fedora-40\ .\fedora-40-rootfs.tar.gz

The second one was to verify if the same issue occurs with a commonly available Fedora-based distribution. To do this, I installed Oracle Linux using the following command:

wsl --install OracleLinux_9_1

[OneBlue]

Ok I see. Can you share the output of cat /etc/locale inside that distribution ?

[microsoft-github-policy-service]

This issue has been automatically closed since it has not had any author activity for the past 7 days. If you're still experiencing this issue please re-file it as a new issue.

Thank you!