Where do I initialise the LANG and LC_ALL sys variables under Ubuntu 8.10?

Question

Under Ubuntu 8.10, bash shell, the LANG and LC_ALL variables are not set:

user@machine1:~$ locale
LANG=
LC_CTYPE="POSIX"
LC_NUMERIC="POSIX"
LC_TIME="POSIX"
LC_COLLATE="POSIX"
LC_MONETARY="POSIX"
LC_MESSAGES="POSIX"
LC_PAPER="POSIX"
LC_NAME="POSIX"
LC_ADDRESS="POSIX"
LC_TELEPHONE="POSIX"
LC_MEASUREMENT="POSIX"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="POSIX"
LC_ALL=

Where should I set those variables so that they point to en_US.UTF-8. Once that is done, do I need to restart anything?

Answer 1

You can set it per user in ~/.bashrc:

export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

If you do not have that locale file installed, you can do it by

locale-gen en_US.UTF-8

Answer 2

LANG is set in /etc/default/locale the rest of those the LC_ stuff are locale specific variables that I believe are set by the bash. They aren't set by xterm anyway. See man locale and man setlocale for more information.