Make resilient to missing /etc/default/locale file - causes Postgres to install as ASCII rather than UTF8

[mvl22]

On the new live server, but not on a test VM oddly, I'm getting this failure:

script[Create the database] action runPG::InvalidParameterValue: ERROR:  new encoding (UTF8)
is incompatible with the encoding of the template database (SQL_ASCII)
HINT:  Use the same encoding as in the template database, or use template0 as template.
: CREATE DATABASE "cyclescape_production" ENCODING = 'unicode'

Postgres has the following databases on the live server:

postgres=# \l

postgres    SQL_ASCII
template0    SQL_ASCII
template1    SQL_ASCII

with the shell command 'locale' giving:

$ locale
LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=
LC_CTYPE="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=

Hmm... on the VM, I get:

postgres=# \l

postgres    UTF8
template0    UTF8
template1    UTF8

with the shell command 'locale' giving:

$ locale
LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=en_GB:en
LC_CTYPE="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=

I wonder if there is some kind of system setting that is wrong on the new server. (If so, we probably need to detect this.)

Potentially useful links:

• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8394789/postgresql-9-1-installation-and-database-encoding
• http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/interactive/app-initdb.html
• http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/interactive/locale.html

[mvl22]

I found the problem, and the Chef repo needs to be made resilient to this.

Basically the server seems not to have an /etc/default/locale file which should contain

LANG="en_GB.UTF-8"
LANGUAGE="en_GB:en"

Accordingly, our Postgres install ends up with ASCII databases, not UTF8, causing our application not to install later on.

I've found the same problem described here:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/maas/+bug/1382774

DOES work, resulting in UTF8:

su root
echo "LC_ALL=en_GB.UTF-8" >> /etc/default/locale

# Uninstall any previous installation
service postgresql stop
apt-get -y remove --purge postgresql-9.3 postgresql-9.3-postgis-2.1
rm -rf /var/lib/postgresql/
# Reinstall
apt-get -y install postgresql-9.3 postgresql-9.3-postgis-2.1

# The output of this command will CORRECTLY now include the lines:
# "locale en_GB.UTF-8"

DOESN'T work, resulting in ASCII:

su root
rm -f /etc/default/locale

# Uninstall any previous installation
service postgresql stop
apt-get -y remove --purge postgresql-9.3 postgresql-9.3-postgis-2.1
rm -rf /var/lib/postgresql/
# Reinstall
apt-get -y install postgresql-9.3 postgresql-9.3-postgis-2.1

# The output of this command will show the following:
# "missing default/locale"
# "deleted default/locale"
# "locale C"

This is 100% repeatable - replay the blocks and you'll find it either installs as ASCII or installs as UTF8.

[nakic]

Confirmed problem, used this (as root) to get around the problem:

 for y in $(locale | cut -d '=' -f 2| sort |uniq );do locale-gen $y; done