#1151251 libc6: Can't generate locales after dpkg-reconfigure locales

Package:
libc6
Source:
libc6
Description:
GNU C Library: Shared libraries
Submitter:
Ryan Cunningham
Date:
2026-10-19 08:19:02 UTC
Severity:
normal
Tags:
#1151251#5
Date:
2026-10-19 08:16:57 UTC
From:
To:
Dear Maintainer,

I encountered the following error message when attempting to run
'dpkg-reconfigure locales' to change my computer's locale settings to Spanish:

[sudo] password for ryan:
Generating locales (this might take a while)...
  es_US.UTF-8... done
Generation complete.
*** update-locale: Error: invalid locale settings:  LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 LANG=es_US.UTF-8
----------
locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: No such file or directory
locale: Cannot set LC_MESSAGES to default locale: No such file or directory
locale: Cannot set LC_ALL to default locale: No such file or directory
ANSI_X3.4-1968
----------

Instead of this error message, I expected text output from my computer to be in
Spanish (note that it is not my mother tongue). I did not do anything so far to
cause or remediate the problem myself.

I'm carbon-copying the Debian Installer as 'localedef' may be part of its
images.