On a normal server e.g. a Linode VPS I would normally do:
localectl set-locale LANG=<locale>.utf8 timedatectl set-timezone <timezone> But since systemd is not present or does not work on containers I get:
Failed to create bus connection: No such file or directory Now, my goal is just to change these settings without using systemd but such approach seems to go undocumented. Is there a reference for non-systemd alternatives to config tools?
Some documentation about locale setting in arch wiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/locale
In Dockerfile, adjust LANG to your desired locale. You can add more than one locale in /etc/locale.gen to have a choice later.
Works on debian, arch, but locale-gen misses on fedora:
ENV LANG=en_US.utf8 RUN echo "$LANG UTF-8" >> /etc/locale.gen RUN locale-gen RUN update-locale --reset LANG=$LANG More general is localedef, works on fedora, too:
ENV LANG=en_US.UTF-8 localedef --verbose --force -i en_US -f UTF-8 en_US.UTF-8 Put this in your Dockerfile
ENV TZ=America/Denver RUN ln -snf /usr/share/zoneinfo/$TZ /etc/localtime && echo $TZ > /etc/timezone Edit .bash_profile or .bashrc from root and add the following.
TZ='Asia/Kolkata' export TZ Save file and commit image after its done.
ENV=Asia/Kolkata in the Dockerfile.Based on a technique used in sti-base, I came up with the following workaround for https://github.com/ncoghlan/fedbuildenv/blob/09a18d91e7af64a45394669bac2595a4b628960d/Dockerfile#L26:
# Set a useful default locale RUN echo "export LANG=en_US.utf-8" > /opt/export_LANG.sh ENV BASH_ENV=/opt/export_LANG.sh \ ENV=/opt/export_LANG.sh \ PROMPT_COMMAND="source /opt/export_LANG.sh" BASH_ENV covers non-interactive bash sessions, ENV covers sh sessions, and PROMPT_COMMAND covers interactive bash sessions.
this seems to be the debians's equivalent of locale-gen:
RUN localedef -v -c -i fr_FR -f UTF-8 fr_FR.UTF-8 || true 