Fixing locale issues with postgres

I came across this problem the other day and thought I’d post up the fix because it’s simple to fix but a show stopper if you can’t.

I’m running Linux Mint 64-bit Cinnamon and Postgres 9.1 as a refenece in case you can’t copy-paste my commands.

Basically, when I copied an already running version of postgres to a new box and it failed to start. When I took a look in the postgres log for when you try to start it, I could see that it was complaining about a missing locale. For me, it was en_AU.UTF-8.

To generate (install) the new locale, run this command:

sudo locale-gen _yourLocale_

so for me, it was:

sudo locale-gen en_AU.UTF-8

Then, we need to tell the system that there are new locales with this command:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales

You’re done, try to fire up postgres or whatever it was you were trying and you should be in business.