locale.conf — Configuration file for locale settings
/etc/locale.conf
The /etc/locale.conf file
configures system-wide locale settings. It is read at
early-boot by
systemd(1).
The basic file format of
locale.conf is a
newline-separated list of environment-like
shell-compatible variable assignments. It is possible
to source the configuration from shell scripts,
however, beyond mere variable assignments, no shell
features are supported, allowing applications to read
the file without implementing a shell compatible
execution engine.
Note that the kernel command line options
locale.LANG=,
locale.LANGUAGE=,
locale.LC_CTYPE=,
locale.LC_NUMERIC=,
locale.LC_TIME=,
locale.LC_COLLATE=,
locale.LC_MONETARY=,
locale.LC_MESSAGES=,
locale.LC_PAPER=,
locale.LC_NAME=,
locale.LC_ADDRESS=,
locale.LC_TELEPHONE=,
locale.LC_MEASUREMENT=,
locale.LC_IDENTIFICATION= may be
used to override the locale settings at boot.
The locale settings configured in
/etc/locale.conf are system-wide
and are inherited by every service or user, unless
overridden or unset by individual programs or
individual users.
Depending on the operating system, other configuration files might be checked for locale configuration as well, however only as fallback.
localectl(1) may be used to alter the settings in this file during runtime from the command line. Use systemd-firstboot(1) to initialize them on mounted (but not booted) system images.
The following locale settings may be set using
/etc/locale.conf:
LANG=,
LANGUAGE=,
LC_CTYPE=,
LC_NUMERIC=,
LC_TIME=,
LC_COLLATE=,
LC_MONETARY=,
LC_MESSAGES=,
LC_PAPER=,
LC_NAME=,
LC_ADDRESS=,
LC_TELEPHONE=,
LC_MEASUREMENT=,
LC_IDENTIFICATION=. Note that
LC_ALL may not be configured in
this file. For details about the meaning and semantics
of these settings, refer to
locale(7).
Example 1. German locale with English messages
/etc/locale.conf:
LANG=de_DE.UTF-8 LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8