PostgreSQL 9.1 installation and database encoding

Question

I just did my first install of PostgreSQL 9.1 on Ubuntu 10.04.

note: I have done it a few times on Windows with an installer without issues.

After a bit of effor

Answer 1

The relevant option is --locale=locale to the initdb command which initializes your database cluster. If you don't supply it explicitly it defaults to the system locale. (You probably run your Ubuntu on locale 'C'.)

Read more about it in the excellent manual here.

In PostgreSQL you can still sneak in a database with different locale by basing a new database off template0 instead of the default templeate1. I quote the manual here:

The encoding and locale settings must match those of the template database, except when template0 is used as template.

But I'd rather recreate the database cluster with the desired locale. Much cleaner.

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Edit: info about available locales

You can only use locales that are provided by the operating system. I quote the manual here:

What locales are available on your system under what names depends on what was provided by the operating system vendor and what was installed. On most Unix systems, the command locale -a will provide a list of available locales. Windows uses more verbose locale names, such as German_Germany or Swedish_Sweden.1252, but the principles are the same.

Look at locale-gen in a Unix-system, if you want to use a locale that has not yet been generated. The important thing to understand is that multiple locales can be installed in your OS, but only one of them can be picked for system parameters like LC_CTYPE, LC_COLLATE, etc. Look at the output of locale versus locale -a in the shell. Usually it is the same for all, set via LC_ALL.

@David: What you did may have solved your problem, but you could have had that easier. Also, be aware that the environment variable LANG only provides the default for all locale settings. If any of them is set to something different, LANG will be overridden. Set LC_ALL to override any existing setting. Here is one of many sites in the web telling you more about that.

To check all current locale settings of your database (cluster), run in your database:

SHOW ALL;

Or more specifically:

SELECT *
FROM   pg_settings
WHERE  name ~~ 'lc%';