Installation fails with en_GB as default locale.

cobordism

Hello,
I have been trying unsuccessfully to install providence 2.0.9 on ubuntu 24.04.

I have set the locale in providence/setup.php as define("__CA_DEFAULT_LOCALE__", "en_GB");
Whenever I start the /install process on the server, (profile Dublin Core 2018) it fails when the status bar is filled about a quarter of the way with the error message: "The locale default is set to a non-existing locale. Try adding 'en_GB' to your profile."

What I have tried:
I have set everything to en_GB.UTF-8 in /etc/default/locale
I have set /etc/apache2/envvars to use system default locale
When that didn't work I went back to basics.
I have made sure the locale exists:

sudo locale-gen en_GB.UTF-8
sudo apt install language-pack-en

I tried to set the every way I could think of, double and triple setting it and generating it.

sudo update-locale LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales
sudo localectl set-locale LANG=en_GB.UTF-8

$ 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=

$ locale -a | grep en_GB
en_GB
en_GB.iso88591
en_GB.utf8

and yet the installation keeps failing with
"The locale default is set to a non-existing locale. Try adding 'en_GB' to your profile."

Any suggestions on how to fix this? (other than switching to en_US)

thank you.

PS Have not yet installed pawtucket. that's next on my list. Just mentioning it here in case that info helps you somehow.

cobordism

especially, if you can shed light on the message "Try adding 'en_GB' to your profile", that might help.

Which profile? It's not the server system profile, it's not apache2, it's not the sql database ... what profile??

so confused..

darrigan

"Your profile" probably means your collectiveaccess profile.
Check if there are following folders and files at right place:

providence/app/locale/en_GB/messages.mo and messages.po
providence/app/lib/Parsers/TimeExpressionParser/en_GB.lang

Look here also: https://docs.collectiveaccess.org/providence/user/dataModelling/Locales

cobordism

darrigan Yes, all those files exist.
providence/app/locale/en_GB/messages.mo
providence/app/locale/en_GB/messages.po
providence/app/lib/Parsers/TimeExpressionParser/en_GB.lang

as for "Your Profile", I can't have a collectiveaccess profile yet because the installation doesn't even complete.

In the end I had to give up and switch to en_US. I figured the code was just too buggy to support another default locale.

Several errors later, after finally managing to get the installer to run through. (Yay!)
I managed to log in as the administrator. Then under Manage -> Administration -> Locales, I see the option for en_UK ?! That is not a standard code! not a good sign.

Next I tried to continue to pawtucket2
The site at https://github.com/collectiveaccess/pawtucket2 gives the installation instructions as Installation instructions: https://docs.collectiveaccess.org/providence/user/setup/installation.html and while that does look like providence and not pawtucket, the point is mot, because it is a 404.
It also asks us to "Follow the release version installation instructions to complete the installation." without explaining what that is and afaict there are none.
I did find https://docs.collectiveaccess.org/pawtucket/ but that also does not explain installation.

For the record, after a full day of futzing, I did manage to install both providence and pawtucket2 in US English, but it was far, far more work than it should have been. Documentation was missing, incomplete, or incorrect.

I was hoping to volunteer to administer this software for an archive project, but now I don't dare.

cobordism

darrigan Yes, all those files exist.
providence/app/locale/en_GB/messages.mo
providence/app/locale/en_GB/messages.po
providence/app/lib/Parsers/TimeExpressionParser/en_GB.lang

as for "Your Profile", I can't have a collectiveaccess profile yet because the installation doesn't even complete.

In the end I had to give up and switch to en_US. I figured the code was just too buggy to support another default locale.

Next I tried to continue to pawtucket2
The site at https://github.com/collectiveaccess/pawtucket2 gives the installation instructions as:
"Installation instructions: https://docs.collectiveaccess.org/providence/user/setup/installation.html"
and while that does look like providence and not pawtucket, the point is moot, because it is a 404.
It also asks us to "Follow the release version installation instructions to complete the installation." without explaining what that is. Afaict there are none.
I did find https://docs.collectiveaccess.org/pawtucket/ but that also does not explain installation.

I was hoping to volunteer to administer this software for an archive project, but now I don't dare.

PS I really don't mean to complain. This is free open source software and nobody owes me anything. I do however want to note that I am running multiple webservers, s matrix-chat server, a bluesky private data server, fediverse services, a nextcloud server, a jitsi server ... and none of them were this tricky to get up and running.
It isn't the software itself, it is the documentation.

seth

The profile you’re using doesn’t include a definition for en_GB. Not all profiles do. en_US is the only locale that is pretty much guaranteed to be defined consistently.

You can modify the profile to include the en_GB locale by editing the file and adding a <locale> tag for it. If the profile included a locale for en_UK that is in error.

cobordism

seth We are talking about the administrator profile that is being created during the initial installation.

right?

I didn't do anything except set the default locale to en_GB before installation because the users of this instance will all be British. I did not create any profiles or modify any profiles.

monica

cobordism
It means your install profile. The Dublin Core 2018 profile you mention in your first post.
If you copy that profile and the base profile and find and replace all en_US with en_GB then it will work. If there is a en_UK in that file(by mistake) then you could rename that instead.
Install profiles are at install/profiles/xml

I have had to do this for my local clients as I’m in en_AU. It was designed/intended that people would most likely be creating their own profiles to install with. Otherwise you install with en_US then add/edit locales from the graphic UI.

seth

monica

There's no en_UK locale in any of the profiles included in 2.0.9. I do wonder where that came from.

monica

seth It's in the base profile https://github.com/collectiveaccess/providence/blob/master/install/profiles/xml/base.xml

seth

Ah. Thanks. I was just using grep to find strings. Will correct that now.