locale problem, can't do much with debian atm!

[netstrider]

Please people, I downloaded debian netinst and got it installed no problem. However I didn't have any GUI of course, so I did the following (probably not practical for someone not familiar with debian and who has very limited experience with Linux)

apt-get install x-window-system kdebase kdm

In total it was 89MB of downloading etc. It installed and KDE works...However, I downloaded firefox via apt. So when trying to run it for the first time I got some error like this:

(firefox-bin:2926): Gtk-WARNING **: Locale not supported by C library.
        Using the fallback 'C' locale.

Well this shows about three times on bootup as well. Anyway someone told me to do this:

locale
and locale -a

I got this, in order as above:

dbuser@dbhost:/$ locale
locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: No such file or directory
locale: Cannot set LC_MESSAGES to default locale: No such file or directory
locale: Cannot set LC_ALL to default locale: No such file or directory
LANG=en_ZA
LC_CTYPE="en_ZA"
LC_NUMERIC="en_ZA"
LC_TIME="en_ZA"
LC_COLLATE="en_ZA"
LC_MONETARY="en_ZA"
LC_MESSAGES="en_ZA"
LC_PAPER="en_ZA"
LC_NAME="en_ZA"
LC_ADDRESS="en_ZA"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_ZA"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_ZA"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_ZA"
LC_ALL=
dbuser@dbhost:/$

I think it must be a problem with 'LC_ALL=' anyway when I do locale -a I get this:

dbuser@dbhost:/$ locale -a
locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: No such file or directory
locale: Cannot set LC_MESSAGES to default locale: No such file or directory
locale: Cannot set LC_COLLATE to default locale: No such file or directory
C
POSIX
dbuser@dbhost:/$

(Just so you know I live in South Africa so en_ZA is correct)

So as a last resort I tried the following (sorry about all the reading involved here)

dbhost:/home/dbuser# dpkg-reconfigure localedef
perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
        LANGUAGE = "en_ZA:en_US:en_GB:en",
        LC_ALL = (unset),
        LANG = "en_ZA"
    are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: No such file or directory
locale: Cannot set LC_MESSAGES to default locale: No such file or directory
locale: Cannot set LC_ALL to default locale: No such file or directory
Package `localedef' is not installed and no info is available.
Use dpkg --info (= dpkg-deb --info) to examine archive files,
and dpkg --contents (= dpkg-deb --contents) to list their contents.
/usr/sbin/dpkg-reconfigure: localedef is not installed
dbhost:/home/dbuser#

I really don't know what to do! Please help!!!

[iwanabeguru]

try an original english
dpkg-reconfigure locales

[netstrider]

:'(

dbhost:/home/dbuser# dpkg-reconfigure locales
perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
LANGUAGE = "en_ZA:en_US:en_GB:en",
LC_ALL = (unset),
LANG = "en_ZA"
are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: No such file or directory
locale: Cannot set LC_MESSAGES to default locale: No such file or directory
locale: Cannot set LC_ALL to default locale: No such file or directory
/usr/sbin/dpkg-reconfigure: locales is broken or not fully installed
dbhost:/home/dbuser#

[Vergil83]

try installing and running localeconf

[macondo]

If nothing works, go to your /etc/environment, erase everything and write:

LC_ALL=en_ZA
LANGUAGE=en_ZA
LC_TYPE=en_ZA

LANG=en_ZA

# reboot

See if that works...

[netstrider]

Thanks for all the help, I'll surely try it out