the VM is running with native name encoding of latin1 which may cause Elixir to malfunction as it expects utf8

Question

How to solve this warning being prompted every time I execute Elixir code or enter iex?

warning: the VM is running with native name encoding of latin1 which may cause Elixir to malfunction as it expects utf8. Please ensure your locale is set to UTF-8 (which can be verified by running "locale" in your shell)

$ locale
locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: No such file or directory
locale: Cannot set LC_ALL to default locale: No such file or directory
LANG=en_US.utf8
LANGUAGE=en_US:
LC_CTYPE=UTF-8
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.utf8"
LC_TIME="en_US.utf8"
LC_COLLATE="en_US.utf8"
LC_MONETARY="en_US.utf8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.utf8"
LC_PAPER="en_US.utf8"
LC_NAME="en_US.utf8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US.utf8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.utf8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US.utf8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.utf8"
LC_ALL=

$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
Release:        14.04
Codename:       trusty

score 20 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 04 '15 at 22:27

20

Apparently unset LC_ALL= was the issue, I checked

$ cat /etc/default/locale
LANG="en_US.utf8"
LANGUAGE="en_US:"

ensuring LC_ALL is missing, to fix it, I executed:

$ sudo update-locale LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8

this command added LC_ALL to /etc/default/locale file:

$ cat /etc/default/locale
LANG="en_US.utf8"
LANGUAGE="en_US:"
LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8

and error is gone.

answered Sep 04 '15 at 22:27

Rustam Gasanov

15,290
8
59
72

3

The interesting part is here: [erl_sys_common_misc.c](https://github.com/erlang/otp/blob/a2670f0822fc6729df956c8ec8c381340ff0a5fb/erts/emulator/sys/common/erl_sys_common_misc.c) – Peter Bagyinszki Sep 04 '15 at 22:34
On Ubuntu 14.04, it worked for me, but I had to log out and log back in. – stuartpalmer Sep 14 '17 at 16:56
reconnect cli after doing above – Karan Dec 01 '18 at 17:45

score 11 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 20 '17 at 14:19

11

I'm using erlang inside a docker container and the other solutions didn't cut it. The command update-locale may not be available inside a docker ubuntu container, so I've stole some code that installs it from https://hub.docker.com/r/voidlock/erlang/~/dockerfile/.

apt-get update && apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends locales
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8 \
    && echo $LANG UTF-8 > /etc/locale.gen \
    && locale-gen \
    && update-locale LANG=$LANG

answered Apr 20 '17 at 14:19

ichigolas

7,595
27
50

FWIW, this didn't work for me without also setting the `LANG` environment variable w/ an `ENV` declaration. I didn't realize the existence of the environment variable at runtime was significant. – ollien Feb 26 '23 at 20:16

score 6 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 05 '19 at 00:51

6

I encountered this when using a docker image. Adding the following line to my Dockerfile solved this:

ENV LANG=C.UTF-8

answered Aug 05 '19 at 00:51

vee

1,247
16
18

score 5 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 25 '17 at 20:12

This happens when you SSH from your Mac laptop to a Linux server (including a virtual Linux server running on your laptop). SSH forwards the LANG and LC_* environment variables from the local shell to the remote shell, and some of the values used on the Mac are not valid on the Linux server.

The problem can be fixed in various ways, including installing the missing locales on the server. I recommend simply disabling the SSH environment forwarding, either on the server (remove AcceptEnv in /etc/ssh/sshd_config) or on the laptop (remove SendEnv in /etc/ssh/ssh_config).

Read more in How to fix a locale setting warning from Perl?

score 5 · Answer 5 · answered Apr 24 '18 at 17:31

5

On centOS 7 the following worked for me:

localedef -c -f UTF-8 -i en_US en_US.UTF-8
export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8

Should work for most if not all RHEL distributions. Cheers!

answered Apr 24 '18 at 17:31

radtek

34,210
11
144
111

If you aren't root just add a sudo in front. This worked for me, thanks. – Sinc Jul 24 '19 at 20:42

score 3 · Answer 6 · answered Apr 11 '22 at 11:13

3

in the nix-shell this command helped me:

export LOCALE_ARCHIVE=/usr/lib/locale/locale-archive

ref: https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Locales

answered Apr 11 '22 at 11:13

nils petersohn

2,317
2
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score 1 · Answer 7 · answered Mar 03 '17 at 08:13

1

For me setting the locale in my init script /etc/init/my_start_script.conf did the trick

env LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 
export LC_ALL

answered Mar 03 '17 at 08:13

Informatom

103
4

score 0 · Answer 8 · answered Dec 19 '20 at 18:36

0

sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales

on Ubuntu 18.04.5 LTS did it!

answered Dec 19 '20 at 18:36

user 1007017

391
2
10

the VM is running with native name encoding of latin1 which may cause Elixir to malfunction as it expects utf8

8 Answers8