I was getting the error from all kinds of Linux programs about "setting locale failed". For example, running Perl gave me the following output:
user@machine:~$ perl --version
perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
LANGUAGE = (unset),
LC_ALL = (unset),
LC_CTYPE = "UTF-8",
LANG = "en_US.UTF-8"
are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").If you're running Debian Linux or some derivative, you may also see the following warning when you run some command:
Warning: locale not supported by C library, locale unchanged
The solution is to install all locales:
$ sudo apt-get install locales-all
If the above didn't help, or isn't applicable, continue.
What it comes down to, is that I was using SSH from my MacBook (running OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.3) to log into my Debian Linux server (running Squeeze).
Apparently, after logging remotely into Linux, the SSH client sets the LC_CTYPE environment variable to the same value as OS X. This conflicts with the LANG environment variable that Debian sets by default. That's because under Linux, the LANG is an overarcing variable, from which others, like LC_CTYPE, can be derived. That wouldn't be a problem, except the LC_CTYPE variable its contents are differently formatted under OS X and Linux.
The warning says that it's "falling back to the standard locale". That means nothing will be translated, and only ASCII will be used when printing characters. No unicode support, I guess?
The irritating warning can be removed with a small change on the Linux side, by unsetting the LC_CTYPE in your .bashrc. Add the following line:
unset LC_CTYPE
However, this gave me problems when using SVN from the Macbook; whenever I'd do some remote action, I'd get something like the following:
user@macbook:trunk$ svn log --limit 1 svnserve: warning: cannot set LC_CTYPE locale svnserve: warning: environment variable LC_CTYPE is UTF-8 svnserve: warning: please check that your locale name is correct
Thus alternatively, you can fix this with a similar change on the OS X side, by adding the following two lines to .bash_profile:
unset LC_CTYPE export LANG="en_US.UTF-8"
Instead of unsetting LC_CTYPE, you can also go to the Terminal app its preferences, open the Settings tab, select your profile on the left side, go to the Advanced tab, and uncheck "Set locale variables on startup".