2.3.3-RELEASE tmux locale problem

l3lu3

I've been running tmux on pfsense over ssh for years now and had zero issue with it. After my upgrade to 2.3.3-RELEASE, it's spitting out:

tmux: need UTF-8 locale (LC_CTYPE) but have US-ASCII

I referenced this topic :https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=124487.0, with no solution. I've edited /etc/profile , ~/.profile , ~/.login_conf with settings that should work. I was able to set LANG to en_US.UTF-8 but then complains:

tmux: invalid LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE or LANG

I noticed that /usr/share/locale/en_US.UTF-8 was empty, populated it with files from a working fbsd box. No dice. I'm getting ready to spin up a 2.3.2 vm and compare, just hoping to get some guidance as well. I'm surely not the only one with this issue, and since it is in the official repo now, it'd be great to get a little help :) Thanks in advance

l3lu3

Bump. I'm still coming up with nothing. Anyone got any ideas?

l3lu3

I'm still coming up with zilch. I saw the recent update and crossed my fingers this was magically fixed, but nope. Anyone have any ideas? I've tried setting every usual fbsd option, even populated the corresponding locale dirs, but tmux still complains. There's also a reddit post about this as well, with no answers. It'd be great if a dev could speak up and offer some guidance on what has changed. There's zero point in having the package available if it's unusable :) Any help is greatly appreciated!

jimp

What version of pfSense were you running before the upgrade?

And what version of tmux?

jimp

Looks like it's actually from the latest version of tmux not liking that we don't ship with the locale files at the moment.

If you grab the UTF-8 locale files from a FreeBSD box of the same vintage, it works. For example, if you grab http://atxfiles.pfsense.org/jimp/fbsd-10.3-en_US.UTF-8.tgz and then decompress it in /usr/share/locale/en_US.UTF-8 then tmux runs.

ioiioi

just in case if someone need, I found that mosh need utf-8 too, when I use mobaxterm on windows to access pfsense with mosh. it pop up error message: the client's charset is zh_CN.UTF-8, but pfsense absense. so I have to find zh_CN.UTF-8 of freebsd 10.3 and put it on to /usr/share/locale/zh_CN.UTF-8.

the trick is all locale are located on freebsd's base.txz.

here is a link: http://ftp.jaist.ac.jp/pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/i386/10.3-RELEASE/base.txz

l3lu3

@jimp:

Looks like it's actually from the latest version of tmux not liking that we don't ship with the locale files at the moment.

If you grab the UTF-8 locale files from a FreeBSD box of the same vintage, it works. For example, if you grab http://atxfiles.pfsense.org/jimp/fbsd-10.3-en_US.UTF-8.tgz and then decompress it in /usr/share/locale/en_US.UTF-8 then tmux runs.

You nailed it Jim! I didn't think there would be a difference in locale files between 10.3 and 11. Now I know :) Much appreciated again. Glad to know I had the right idea, just the wrong set of files.

mike3606

I know this is an old thread, but in case anyone had trouble after attempting to utilize the en_US.UTF-8 files at the links referenced within some of the answers I wanted to share what I did in order to get tmux up and running.

Environemnt:

PFSense box

uname -a
FreeBSD [FQDN-REMOVED] 11.2-RELEASE-p10 FreeBSD 11.2-RELEASE-p10 #12 10fea60fdde(factory-RELENG_2_4_4): Thu May 16 06:02:25 EDT 2019     root@buildbot1-nyi.netgate.com:/build/factory-crossbuild-244/obj/armv6/tDULKC6G/arm.armv6/build/factory-crossbuild-244/pfSense/tmp/FreeBSD-src/sys/pfSense-SG-3100  arm

Windows 10 host w/vagrant

vagrant -v 
Vagrant 2.2.4     # w/ freebsd/FreeBSD-12.0-CURRENT box & vmware_desktop provider (The provider should not make any difference as well as the host.)

Check to see if tmux is not working for you:

Ensure tmux is installed on the pfsense system

pkg install tmux

Check the version (versions shouldn't be affected however for reference in the future this is the version I was working with.)

tmux -V
tmux 2.7

Attempt to run tmux

tmux

tmux: need UTF-8 locale (LC_CTYPE) but have US-ASCII OR 
tmux: invalid LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE or LANG

Check your locale

locale

LANG=""
LC_CTYPE="C"
LC_COLLATE="C"
LC_TIME="C"
LC_NUMERIC="C"
LC_MONETARY="C"
LC_MESSAGES="C"
LC_ALL=

Check to see if /usr/share/locale/en_US.UTF-8/* has any files

ls /usr/share/locale/en_US.UTF-8

<Empty>

If the steps above displayed similar results AND THE LC_* information doesn't report en_US.UTF-8 then this will likely mean tmux cannot run and the steps below may help you get tmux up and running.

Steps I took to fix my tmux install:

edit /etc/login.conf with the default profile to reflect the following attributes for lang & setenv.

/etc/login.conf
-- SNIPPED --
default:\                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
        :passwd_format=sha512:\                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        
        :copyright=/etc/COPYRIGHT:\                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    
        :welcome=/etc/motd:\                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
        :lang=en_US.UTF-8:\                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            
        :setenv=LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8,LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8,LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8,LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8,LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8,LC_NUMERIC=en_US.UTF-8,LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8,MAIL=/var/mail/$,BLOCKSIZE=K:\ 
-- SNIPPED --

run cap_mkdb (see ref #3)

cap_mkdb /etc/login.conf

Ensure you have vagrant some sort of VM provider to install a fresh version for FreeBSD.

vagrant init freebsd/FreeBSD-12.0-CURRENT
vagrant up
vagrant ssh

From inside the FreeBSD 12 vm provided by vagrant scp your files over to your pfsense box

scp /usr/share/locale/en_US.UTF-8/* root@<pfsense_ip>:/usr/share/locale/en_US.UTF-8/

SSH into the pfsesne box and reboot the box for good measure and to ensure the login conf has been applied

ssh root@<pfsense_ip>
reboot

Run tmux again and profit

tmux

References:

https://www.reddit.com/r/PFSENSE/comments/5xh00z/tmux_need_utf8_locale/
https://forum.netgate.com/topic/112049/2-3-3-release-tmux-locale-problem/7
https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/using-localization.html

daplumber

Just a quick note that I'm using 2.5.2-RELEASE which is FreeBSD 12.2

In order too get tux and mosh to work I had to copy both en_US.UTF-8 and C.UTF-8 from the 12.2 base into /usr/share/locale since LC_CTYPE is a link.