Installation problem: failed to initialize lc_messages to ""

Stefan Schwarzer <stefan.schwarzer@grid.unep.ch> writes:

FATAL: XX000: failed to initialize lc_messages to ""
LOCATION: InitializeGUCOptions, guc.c:2666

Typically what this means is that you have an improper setting of LANG
or LC_ALL in your environment ("improper" meaning that it doesn't match
any of the locales that are actually installed on your system). You
can use "locale -a" to find out what's installed.

regards, tom lane

FATAL: XX000: failed to initialize lc_messages to ""
LOCATION: InitializeGUCOptions, guc.c:2666

Typically what this means is that you have an improper setting of LANG
or LC_ALL in your environment ("improper" meaning that it doesn't
match
any of the locales that are actually installed on your system). You
can use "locale -a" to find out what's installed.

Hmm... Did the "locale -a"... and lot's of things appeared. Beneath
them this one:

en_US
en_US.ISO8859-1
en_US.ISO8859-15
en_US.US-ASCII
en_US.UTF-8

I guess it's the most widely used. What am I supposed to do now? I
tried to specify a --locale=C, which I read somewhere.... no idea.

Please, give me a hint what I should do to proper set postgres up.

Thanks a lot,

Stef

FATAL: XX000: failed to initialize lc_messages to ""
LOCATION: InitializeGUCOptions, guc.c:2666

Typically what this means is that you have an improper setting of LANG
or LC_ALL in your environment ("improper" meaning that it doesn't
match
any of the locales that are actually installed on your system). You
can use "locale -a" to find out what's installed.

I tried this:

/usr/local/pgsql/bin/initdb -D --locale=en_US.UTF-8 /Users/schwarzer/
Documents/data_postgres

but still the same message.

On 10/01/2008 12:30, Stefan Schwarzer wrote:

/usr/local/pgsql/bin/initdb -D --locale=en_US.UTF-8
/Users/schwarzer/Documents/data_postgres

Dunno if it'll make a difference, but I'd put the "-D" immediately
before the path to the data directory.

Ray.

---------------------------------------------------------------
Raymond O'Donnell, Director of Music, Galway Cathedral, Ireland
rod@iol.ie
---------------------------------------------------------------

/usr/local/pgsql/bin/initdb -D --locale=en_US.UTF-8 /Users/
schwarzer/Documents/data_postgres

Dunno if it'll make a difference, but I'd put the "-D" immediately
before the path to the data directory.

Thanks for the hint. But unfortunately same error message....

"Raymond O'Donnell" <rod@iol.ie> writes:

On 10/01/2008 12:30, Stefan Schwarzer wrote:

/usr/local/pgsql/bin/initdb -D --locale=en_US.UTF-8
/Users/schwarzer/Documents/data_postgres

Dunno if it'll make a difference, but I'd put the "-D" immediately
before the path to the data directory.

Also, pay attention to the first few lines of initdb output ---
it will tell you what it thinks it's supposed to use for locale.

regards, tom lane

/usr/local/pgsql/bin/initdb -D --locale=en_US.UTF-8
/Users/schwarzer/Documents/data_postgres

Dunno if it'll make a difference, but I'd put the "-D" immediately
before the path to the data directory.

Also, pay attention to the first few lines of initdb output ---
it will tell you what it thinks it's supposed to use for locale.

It tells me the following:

The files belonging to this database system will be owned by user
"schwarzer".
This user must also own the server process.

The database cluster will be initialized with locale en_US.UTF-8.
The default database encoding has accordingly been set to UTF8.

fixing permissions on existing directory /Users/schwarzer/Documents/
data_postgres ... ok
creating directory /Users/schwarzer/Documents/data_postgres/global ...
ok
creating directory /Users/schwarzer/Documents/data_postgres/
pg_xlog ... ok
creating directory /Users/schwarzer/Documents/data_postgres/pg_xlog/
archive_status ... ok
creating directory /Users/schwarzer/Documents/data_postgres/
pg_clog ... ok
creating directory /Users/schwarzer/Documents/data_postgres/
pg_subtrans ... ok
creating directory /Users/schwarzer/Documents/data_postgres/
pg_twophase ... ok
creating directory /Users/schwarzer/Documents/data_postgres/
pg_multixact/members ... ok
creating directory /Users/schwarzer/Documents/data_postgres/
pg_multixact/offsets ... ok
creating directory /Users/schwarzer/Documents/data_postgres/base ... ok
creating directory /Users/schwarzer/Documents/data_postgres/base/1 ...
ok
creating directory /Users/schwarzer/Documents/data_postgres/
pg_tblspc ... ok
selecting default max_connections ... 10
selecting default shared_buffers ... 50
creating configuration files ... ok
creating template1 database in /Users/schwarzer/Documents/
data_postgres/base/1 ... FATAL: XX000: failed to initialize
lc_messages to ""
LOCATION: InitializeGUCOptions, guc.c:2666
child process exited with exit code 1
initdb: removing contents of data directory "/Users/schwarzer/
Documents/data_postgres"

How can I control/verify the "server process"? To see if it's running
correctly and that "schwarzer" is as well its owner? Perhaps it's
related with this?

Stefan Schwarzer <stefan.schwarzer@grid.unep.ch> writes:

Also, pay attention to the first few lines of initdb output ---
it will tell you what it thinks it's supposed to use for locale.

It tells me the following:

The files belonging to this database system will be owned by user
"schwarzer".
This user must also own the server process.

The database cluster will be initialized with locale en_US.UTF-8.
The default database encoding has accordingly been set to UTF8.
...
creating template1 database in /Users/schwarzer/Documents/
data_postgres/base/1 ... FATAL: XX000: failed to initialize
lc_messages to ""
LOCATION: InitializeGUCOptions, guc.c:2666

Hmph. That seems to eliminate the bad-locale-setting theory.

In the past, when we've seen instances of this, it's been either
an improper setting or something missing/broken in the platform's
locale support. I'd have thought OS X was relatively impervious
to this type of problem because it's a monolithic install instead
of package-based, but maybe not. What have you got under
/usr/share/locale? On my OS X 10.4 laptop, I see

g42:~ tgl$ ls -lR /usr/share/locale/en_US.UTF-8
total 40
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 28 Apr 26 2006 LC_COLLATE -> ../la_LN.US-ASCII/LC_COLLATE
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 17 Apr 26 2006 LC_CTYPE -> ../UTF-8/LC_CTYPE
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102 Mar 20 2005 LC_MESSAGES
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 30 Apr 26 2006 LC_MONETARY -> ../en_US.ISO8859-1/LC_MONETARY
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 29 Apr 26 2006 LC_NUMERIC -> ../en_US.ISO8859-1/LC_NUMERIC
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 26 Apr 26 2006 LC_TIME -> ../en_US.ISO8859-1/LC_TIME

/usr/share/locale/en_US.UTF-8/LC_MESSAGES:
total 8
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 45 Apr 26 2006 LC_MESSAGES -> ../../en_US.ISO8859-1/LC_MESSAGES/LC_MESSAGES

g42:~ tgl$ ls -lLR /usr/share/locale/en_US.UTF-8
total 200
-r--r--r-- 1 root wheel 4642 Mar 20 2005 LC_COLLATE
-r--r--r-- 1 root wheel 80744 Mar 20 2005 LC_CTYPE
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102 Mar 20 2005 LC_MESSAGES
-r--r--r-- 1 root wheel 34 Mar 20 2005 LC_MONETARY
-r--r--r-- 1 root wheel 8 Mar 20 2005 LC_NUMERIC
-r--r--r-- 1 root wheel 377 Mar 20 2005 LC_TIME

/usr/share/locale/en_US.UTF-8/LC_MESSAGES:
total 8
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 18 Mar 20 2005 LC_MESSAGES

I'm wondering if some of those files are missing, or the symlinks are
dangling, on yours.

regards, tom lane

g42:~ tgl$ ls -lR /usr/share/locale/en_US.UTF-8
total 40
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 28 Apr 26 2006 LC_COLLATE -> ../
la_LN.US-ASCII/LC_COLLATE
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 17 Apr 26 2006 LC_CTYPE -> ../UTF-8/
LC_CTYPE
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102 Mar 20 2005 LC_MESSAGES
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 30 Apr 26 2006 LC_MONETARY -> ../
en_US.ISO8859-1/LC_MONETARY
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 29 Apr 26 2006 LC_NUMERIC -> ../
en_US.ISO8859-1/LC_NUMERIC
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 26 Apr 26 2006 LC_TIME -> ../
en_US.ISO8859-1/LC_TIME

/usr/share/locale/en_US.UTF-8/LC_MESSAGES:
total 8
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 45 Apr 26 2006 LC_MESSAGES -> ../../
en_US.ISO8859-1/LC_MESSAGES/LC_MESSAGES

g42:~ tgl$ ls -lLR /usr/share/locale/en_US.UTF-8
total 200
-r--r--r-- 1 root wheel 4642 Mar 20 2005 LC_COLLATE
-r--r--r-- 1 root wheel 80744 Mar 20 2005 LC_CTYPE
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102 Mar 20 2005 LC_MESSAGES
-r--r--r-- 1 root wheel 34 Mar 20 2005 LC_MONETARY
-r--r--r-- 1 root wheel 8 Mar 20 2005 LC_NUMERIC
-r--r--r-- 1 root wheel 377 Mar 20 2005 LC_TIME

/usr/share/locale/en_US.UTF-8/LC_MESSAGES:
total 8
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 18 Mar 20 2005 LC_MESSAGES

I'm wondering if some of those files are missing, or the symlinks are
dangling, on yours.

Hmmm..... here is what I have. Looks pretty similar....

gridmac7:~ schwarzer$ ls -lR /usr/share/locale/en_US.UTF-8
total 40
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 28 Dec 19 15:24 LC_COLLATE -> ../la_LN.US-
ASCII/LC_COLLATE
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 17 Dec 19 15:24 LC_CTYPE -> ../UTF-8/
LC_CTYPE
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102 Dec 19 15:24 LC_MESSAGES
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 30 Dec 19 15:24 LC_MONETARY -> ../
en_US.ISO8859-1/LC_MONETARY
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 29 Dec 19 15:24 LC_NUMERIC -> ../
en_US.ISO8859-1/LC_NUMERIC
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 26 Dec 19 15:24 LC_TIME -> ../
en_US.ISO8859-1/LC_TIME

/usr/share/locale/en_US.UTF-8/LC_MESSAGES:
total 8
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 45 Dec 19 15:24 LC_MESSAGES -> ../../
en_US.ISO8859-1/LC_MESSAGES/LC_MESSAGES

gridmac7:~ schwarzer$ ls -lLR /usr/share/locale/en_US.UTF-8
total 192
-r--r--r-- 1 root wheel 2086 Sep 24 03:38 LC_COLLATE
-r--r--r-- 1 root wheel 80752 Sep 24 03:38 LC_CTYPE
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102 Dec 19 15:24 LC_MESSAGES
-r--r--r-- 1 root wheel 34 Sep 24 03:38 LC_MONETARY
-r--r--r-- 1 root wheel 8 Sep 24 03:38 LC_NUMERIC
-r--r--r-- 1 root wheel 377 Sep 24 03:39 LC_TIME

/usr/share/locale/en_US.UTF-8/LC_MESSAGES:
total 8
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 18 Sep 24 03:38 LC_MESSAGES

Stefan Schwarzer <stefan.schwarzer@grid.unep.ch> writes:

I'm wondering if some of those files are missing, or the symlinks are
dangling, on yours.

Hmmm..... here is what I have. Looks pretty similar....

Running out of easy answers, aren't we :-(

The next thing I can think of is to run initdb under "ktrace -i" and
compare the results with a working system. The output of this is likely
to be voluminous, so don't send it to the list --- but if you'll send it
to me off-list I'll compare it to what I get here.

regards, tom lane

I'm wondering if some of those files are missing, or the symlinks
are
dangling, on yours.

Hmmm..... here is what I have. Looks pretty similar....

Running out of easy answers, aren't we :-(

The next thing I can think of is to run initdb under "ktrace -i" and
compare the results with a working system. The output of this is
likely
to be voluminous, so don't send it to the list --- but if you'll
send it
to me off-list I'll compare it to what I get here.

Ufff..... I completely reinstalled Leopard (cause was a bit messy,
meanwhile). And thought: Hey, now it should be any problem anymore....
But oups.... it did it again. Gush!

So, looked around again on the net and found this message:
I found this referenced under bug #1344: locale problem The problem
appears to be in going from Linux 2.6.9-5.0.5 to 2.6.9-11 the default
LANG environment variable changed from LANG=en_US.UTF-8 to
LANG=english_us.8859. Error could be identified by typing locale at
the opsys prompt. I fixed by adding to posgres .bash_profile:
LANG=en_US.UTF-8; export LANG
(http://www.mail-archive.com/pgsql-bugs@postgresql.org/msg12073.html)
Also mentioned Linux, it seems to be the same problem with Mac...
Putting the LANG... into the .bash_profile settled the problem.
Hope this helps!
Stef