locale.conf
systemd
Developer
Lennart
Poettering
lennart@poettering.net
locale.conf
5
locale.conf
Configuration file for locale settings
/etc/locale.conf
Description
The /etc/locale.conf file configures
system-wide locale settings. It is read at early-boot by
systemd1.
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.
localectl1
may be used to alter the settings in this file during runtime from
the command line. Use
systemd-firstboot1
to initialize them on mounted (but not booted) system
images.
Options
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
locale7.
Example
German locale with English messages
/etc/locale.conf:
LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8
See Also
systemd1,
locale7,
localectl1,
systemd-localed.service8,
systemd-firstboot1