CentOS 7 /RHEL 7: How To Change The System Locale

The system localeare used to control the language setting of system services and the UI before the user logs in. How Do I change the default system locale in CentOS 7 linux system? How to check the current locate setting under centos 7 or RHEL 7 ? How to get the list of all available locales in current linux system? In this post you will see that how to set the system locale.

CentOS 7/ RHEL 7 Check Current System Locale Settings

To show the current locale settings, you can view the “/etc/locale.conf” configuration file via “cat /etc/locale.conf” command or issue the following “localectl status” command.

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cat / etc / locale.conf OR localectl status

Output:

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[ root @ devops ~ ] # cat /etc/locale.conf LANG =es_US.utf8 [ root @ devops ~ ] # localectl status System Locale: LANG =es_US.utf8 VC Keymap: us X11 Layout: us

CentOS 7 / RHEL 7 List All Available Locales

Before changing the system locale, you must know that which locales are available on the current system, issue the following command:

localectl list-locales

Example: If you want to select a EN_US locale, then you can list all EN_US locales by issue the following command:

localectl list-locales | grep en_US

Outputs:

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[ root @ devops ~ ] # localectl list-locales | grep en_US en_US en_US.iso88591 en_US.iso885915 en_US.utf8

CentOS 7 / RHEL Change The System Locale

There are two ways to change the system locale by through modifying the “/etc/locale.conf” configuration file or using a new command “localect” which is newly added in centos 7 or RHEL 7 operating system.

Edit “/etc/locale.conf” file using “vim” command and search “LANG” line and change its value as what you want to select the locale. such as: change locale to “en_us.iso88591″.vim /etc/locale.conf

Before:

LANG =es_US.utf8

After:

LANG =en_US.iso88591

Save and exit the above configuration file and reboot the system, then the changes will take effect.

# Set the system locale via localectl command

To set the default system locale, you can use the following command:

localectl set-locale LANG = < locale name >

you need to replace the locale name as you want to select the locale.

Example: changing the default locale to german locale, issue the following command:

localectl set-locale LANG =de_DE.UTF- 8

Outputs:

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[ root @ devops ~ ] # localectl set-locale LANG=de_DE.UTF-8 [ root @ devops ~ ] # localectl status System Locale: LANG =de_DE.UTF- 8 VC Keymap: us X11 Layout: us

Note:you must log on the system with root user to run localectl command .