The problem is most likely caused by the fact that LC_CTYPE is somehow, somewhere set to "UTF-8", which is not a valid locale name. So you need to figure out how it happens and delete that incorrect setting.

Run following commands

export LC_ALL="en_US.UTF-8"
export LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales

It will solve this.

Make sure to match the .UTF-8 part to the actual syntax found in the output of locale -a e.g. .utf8 on some systems.

Here is how to solve it on Mac OS X v10.7 (Lion) or Cygwin (Windows 10):

Add the following lines to your bashrc or bash_profile file on the host machine:

# Setting for the new UTF-8 terminal support in Lion
export LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8
export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8

If you are using Z shell (zsh), edit file zshrc:

# Setting for the new UTF-8 terminal support in Lion
LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8
LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8

That's because your locale in your local machine is set to German, which SSH forwards to and tries to use on the server, but your server does not have it installed.

You've got several options:

• Generate the locale. Generate the German locale on the server with sudo locale-gen de.

• Stop forwarding locale from the client. Do not forward the locale environment variable from your local machine to the server. You can comment out the SendEnv LANG LC_* line in the local /etc/ssh/ssh_config file.

• Stop accepting locale on the server. Do not accept the locale environment variable from your local machine to the server. You can comment out the AcceptEnv LANG LC_* line in the remote /etc/ssh/sshd_config file.

• Set the server locale to English. Explicitly set the locale to English on the server. As an example, you can add the following lines to your remote ~/.bashrc or ~/.profile files:

  export LANGUAGE="en"
  export LANG="C"
  export LC_MESSAGES="C"
  

If you don't have root access to the server, the Stop forwarding locale from the client option might be the best (and only) way to go.

The easiest way to "prevent" the exporting of the environment is to overwrite them in your user account on the server side. To do so you can create a .bashrc file (or the appropriate initialization file for your shell) and overwrite the unwanted variables.

example minimal .bashrc file:

unset LC_TIME

alternatively set the variable to some sane value:

export LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8

If you really want to prevent sending some of environment variables then you will most likely need root access on the client and/or the server machine.

On the client side you can edit /etc/ssh/ssh_config and remove or alter the SendEnv line. Most distributions today have that set up to send the locale environment variables (LC_*).

There is a user config file (~/.ssh/config) where you can also set SendEnv. But there you can only append to the list from the system config file, not overwrite. That is why you can only truly disable this option when you have root access.

Alternatively, on the server side you can edit /etc/ssh/sshd_config (note the extra d at sshd_config. the d stands for daemon) and remove or alter the AcceptEnv line. Most distributions today have that set up to accept the locale environment variables (LC_*).

Look up the explanations for SendEnv in the man page for ssh_config and AcceptEnv in the man page for sshd_config.

For the sake of completeness: there is also a PermitUserEnvironment in sshd_config. As the name says, it allows the user to set up some files which will initialize some variables. If PermitUserEnvironment is enabled you can take care of the rest as user, but I have never encountered a system with PermitUserEnvironment enabled.

I fixed this with a few steps for some Raspberry Pis that I was sshing to.

1. I commented out en_GB.UTF-8 in /etc/locale.gen and uncommented en_US.UTF-8.
2. I added the lines LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 and LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 to /etc/default/locale. You may need to add more lines like this such as LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8.
3. I ran export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8.
4. Finally, I ran sudo locale-gen.

If you run locale after these steps you shouldn't see any warnings and you should see en_US.UTF-8 for all of the fields except maybe LANG and LANGUAGE. You can change these manually with export LANG=en_US.UTF-8 and export LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8.

It sounds like your SSH client is configured to forward the locale settings. You can prevent this by altering your configuration (the global file is typically /etc/ssh/ssh_config):

# comment out / remove the following line
SendEnv LANG LC_*

Alternatively you can change the configuration of the server, by editing /etc/ssh/sshd_config on the remote machine (note the d in sshd_config):

# comment out / remove the following line
AcceptEnv LANG LC_*

The root cause is: your environment variable LC_ALL is missing or invalid somehow

Short answer-

just run the following command:

$ export LC_ALL=C

If you keep getting the error in new terminal windows, add it at the bottom of your .bashrc file.

Long answer-

Here is my locale settings:

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

Python2.7

    $ uname -a
    Linux debian 3.16.0-4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 3.16.7-ckt11-1+deb8u6 (2015-11-09) x86_64 GNU/Linux
    $ python --version
    Python 2.7.9
    $ pip --version
    pip 8.1.1 from /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages (python 2.7)
    $ unset LC_ALL
    $ pip install virtualenv
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "/usr/local/bin/pip", line 11, in <module>
        sys.exit(main())
      File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pip/__init__.py", line 215, in main
        locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, '')
      File "/usr/lib/python2.7/locale.py", line 579, in setlocale
        return _setlocale(category, locale)
    locale.Error: unsupported locale setting
    $ export LC_ALL=C
    $ pip install virtualenv
    Requirement already satisfied (use --upgrade to upgrade): virtualenv in /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages

On the server you ssh from do you have a locale set via an environment variable? In looking at my CentOS 6 installation, the only locale that I can find supported is identified as en_US.utf8 (discovered using locale -a command). Could this be the problem?

In my testing, when I set the LC_ALL environment variable to en_US.UTF-8, ssh'd to the server, the output of my locale command was set to POSIX in my case. This the same as when I have NOT set (i.e. unset) the LC_ALL variable before ssh'ing.

When I set my LC_ALL variable to en_US.utf8 or en_US.utf-8, ssh'd to my CentOS 6 box, the output of the locale was the same as what was set on the source box.

Notice I used no caps for UTF also.

Is specifying the user-preferred locale configurations in ~/.profile appropriate for your needs?

Also, to save you the annoyance, stop forwarding locale from your client (/etc/ssh/ssh_config, comment out SendEnv LANG...) and stop accepting on the server (/etc/ssh/sshd_config)..

Or, if you prefer, you can set a ~/.ssh/environment file with the options you want. You'll have to enable PermitUserEnvironment on the server's /etc/ssh/sshd_config file.

Installing

On Fedora, RHEL, Redhat, CentOS I used

sudo dnf install langpacks-de

for the german (de) language packs. Logged out and in and it worked.

Search for other langpacks with

dnf search langpacks-

Changing

To list available locales I used

localectl list-locales

And to set a new one

sudo localectl set-locale de_DE.utf8

Debian ships locales in source form. They need to be compiled explicitly. The reason for this is that compiled locales use a lot more disk space, but most people only use a few of them.

Run dpkg-reconfigure locales as root, select the locales you want in the list (with your settings, you need en_GB and en_US.UTF-8 — I recommend selecting en_US and en_GB.UTF-8 as well) then press <OK>.

Alternatively, edit /etc/locale.gen, uncomment the lines for the locales you want, and run locale-gen as root.

(Note: on Ubuntu, this works differently: run locale-gen with the locales you want to generate as arguments, e.g. sudo locale-gen en_GB en_US en_GB.UTF-8 en_US.UTF-8.)

Alternatively, Debian now has a package locales-all which you can install instead of locales. It has all the locales pre-generated. The downside is that they use up more disk space (112MB vs 16MB).