Default user on Linux machine uses LANG=C.UTF-8 despite /etc/locale.conf having en_US.UTF-8 #2285
Description
I'm running OrbStack 2.0.5 on a 2019 Intel MacBook Pro running macOS Sequoia 15.7.3. When creating a new Linux machine (Ubuntu 24.04 in this case), without any cloud-init configs that might muddy the waters, the root user respects /etc/locale.conf, which has LANG=en_US.UTF-8 set. But the default user created by OrbStack somehow bypasses it, and has C.UTF-8 instead.
This was an absolute bear to troubleshoot, since nowhere in the user's home directory or anywhere under /etc was C.UTF-8 being set as the value of any LANG or LC_* variable, or seemingly even defaulted to. Finally, with some LLM assistance, I discovered this command:
cat /proc/self/environ | tr '\0' '\n' | grep LANG
When I run it as root, I got LANG=en_US.UTF-8, as I'd expect based on /etc/locale.conf. But for the non-root user, it's LANG=C.UTF-8. This is true for both the GUI terminal and Terminal.app ssh orb logins.
Additionally, LC_CTYPE=C.UTF-8 gets set with SSH logins, but not via the OrbStack GUI terminal. If I sudo su after orb ssh, LC_CTYPE remains set to C.UTF-8 even for root, though LANG is still en_US.UTF-8
My macOS terminal environment has LANG=en_US.UTF-8 and LC_CTYPE=fi_FI.UTF-8 set locally, so at least they don't seem to get inherited.
I'm not sure if this is a bug/omission or an intentional design decision. It seems preferable to me that the setting in /etc/locale.conf (or /etc/default/locale, which is just a symlink to /etc/locale.conf on Ubuntu) would be used instead. If this is not feasible, then perhaps the ability to specify the LANG (and LC_CTYPE with orb ssh) would be a good addition.