Error in fresh Ubuntu 22.04.2 install: setlocale: LC_ALL: cannot change locale (en_US.UTF-8) crossgen-corelib.proj

[carlossanlop]

I recently formatted my Surface Pro X (ARM64), installed WSL, and added Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS.
I cloned runtime, installed all the required dependencies for building, and ran the command:

build.sh clr+libs -rc release -arch arm64

Unfortunately, the build failed with an error that crashed my WSL and I had to restart my laptop. This was the error that showed up multiple times before freezing the WSL terminal window:

setlocale: LC_ALL: cannot change locale (en_US.UTF-8) crossgen-corelib.proj

Unfortunately, I was unable to see the exact line where it failed. As mentioned, this message showed up many times and the window was frozen.

I searched this error and found an AskUbuntu thread that suggested running these commands against the desired locale:

sudo locale-gen <localeID>
sudo update-locale LANG=<localeID>

I tried running it using the one that showed up in the error and it succeeded:

carlos@calopearm:~$ sudo locale-gen en_US.UTF-8
Generating locales (this might take a while)...
  en_US.UTF-8... done
Generation complete.
carlos@calopearm:~$ sudo update-locale LANG=en_US.UTF-8
<no output here, so I assume it succeeded>

After that, I built runtime again (same command), and it succeded.

What could've caused the error when building? Is this some misconfiguration in our build scripts that we need to fix, or some problem with this Ubuntu version?

[am11]

I recently formatted my Surface Pro X (ARM64), installed WSL, and added Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS. I cloned runtime, installed all the required dependencies for building, and ran the command:

build.sh clr+libs -rc release -arch arm64

On Debian / Ubuntu the quickest way to set runtime build environment is by running: eng/install-native-dependencies.sh which sets up with default locales for you.

What could've caused the error when building?

e.g. MSBuild Exec task require locales during the build: dotnet/dotnet-buildtools-prereqs-docker#284. Debian-like distros don't come with preconfigured locale in base installation.

[carlossanlop]

Thanks @am11. Good info.

The error message I saw wasn't helpful enough. I expect more than one user hitting this problem and scratching their heads. So I wonder if we should improve the way we handle this:

• Is it possible to check if preconfigured locale is available? If yes, we could add a check that fails quite early in the build, with a more meaningful message.
• If it's not possible, then we could look for the place that failed, capture the error, and print a better message with steps to manually fix the locale issue. As I said, I was unable to determine the exact file/line that failed because the whole console screen had the error message repeated multiple times, and it was frozen so I couldn't scroll.

[carlossanlop]

Alternatively, we could simply improve our workflow documentation to include locales in the list of dependencies to install, and describe the manual steps to execute on Debian-like distros to prevent the error:

https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/blob/main/docs/workflow/requirements/linux-requirements.md#toolchain-setup

Similar to what the docker PR fixed: https://github.com/dotnet/dotnet-buildtools-prereqs-docker/pull/284/files

[mangod9]

dont think this is a crossgen2 specific issue, rather something with infra?

[mangod9]

Closing since this is not crossgen2 related. @carlossanlop, please reopen if you are still hitting any failures.