Swedish locale is missing

[hwsoderlund]

We are using the circle postgres 9.6 image to execute tests against a real database. We have been using the image circleci/postgres:9.6-alpine-ram without issues. Now when I try switching to cimg/postgres:9.6-postgis I get an error message about missing locale:

ERROR:  invalid locale name: "sv_SE.UTF-8"

I tried getting around this by putting locale-gen sv_SE.UTF-8 in the startup command for the postgres image, but to no success. I am unable to get it to generate the locale and start postgres.

docker:
  - image: cimg/go:1.17
  - image: cimg/postgres:9.6-postgis
    command: locale-gen sv_SE.UTF-8
    environment:
        POSTGRES_USER: xxx
        POSTGRES_DB: xxx

I also gave it a go using the postgres 13.4 image, but the locale is missing there too. Is this a mistake, or a deliberate omission?

[FelicianoTech]

I noticed your previous legacy image usage was an Alpine-based image. The next-gen images are Ubuntu only. I wonder if that has something to do with this issue.

Let's find out.

The tags cimg/postgres:13.4 and cimg/postgres:9.6.23 have been updated with all of the config options that the official Debian package uses, including some "locale" changed. Do you mind verifying that your issue is resolved if you can use one of those two images?

If we have to manually start including various locales that are out there, I don't think that's something we'd want to do with this image. I don't think the legacy image did that though so I'm hoping this update ends up working for you.

[hwsoderlund]

Tried cimg/postgres:9.6.23 and it doesn't even want to start up:

docker:
  - image: cimg/go:1.17
  - image: cimg/postgres:9.6.23
    environment:
      POSTGRES_USER: xxx
      POSTGRES_DB: xxx

[BytesGuy]

This is possibly related to #21 , can you try the image again to see if it is now working for you? Thanks!

[hwsoderlund]

Postgres starts up again now. But there is the same locale problem as before.

[hwsoderlund]

It's now been several months, and still no progress afaict. Please see the linked issue above, from @cexbrayat. Clearly I am not the only one having problems with this. I don't think it is unreasonable for us to expect the new images to be functionally identical to the old ones.

[hwsoderlund]

Just FYI, I just tried with the official alpine image postgres:9-alpine, where things work as expected. I will stick with that for now.

[FelicianoTech]

Okay. So this issue has been open for awhile now. I got around to doing some research on this. We are not going to solve this issue in the near future and this is why:

1. This issue itself, CircleCI Ideas, and CircleCI Discuss haven't given us a big indicator that this is a large enough problem right now. The image sets a default of US-en.UTC-8 and this appears to be good enough for the majority of users at the moment.
2. Multiple source, including the Docker Library PostgreSQL image suggest extending a PostgreSQL Docker image is the right path to add additional locales for this scenario.
3. Alpine doesn't use locale files the way Debian and Ubuntu (what our image is based on) does. This makes locale work like you're trying to do not run into the same issue. The Docker Library PostgreSQL image that is Debian based will likely have the same issue as ours. If the Alpine version works, that seems to be your best option at the moment unless you'd like to extend our image.

Apologies for the time it took for us to come to a definitive response to this issue.