locale.conf
systemd
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 format of locale.conf is a newline-separated list of environment-like
shell-compatible variable assignments, ignoring comments and empty lines. 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. See
os-release5 for a
detailed description of the format.
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 users.
Depending on the operating system, other configuration files
might be checked for locale configuration as well, however only as
fallback.
/etc/locale.conf can be updated
using
systemd-localed.service8.
localectl1
may be used to alter the settings in this file during runtime from
the command line. Use
systemd-firstboot1
to customize 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:
# Custom settings
LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8
See Also
systemd1,
locale7,
localectl1,
systemd-localed.service8,
systemd-firstboot1