Re: How to insert non-english characters to the db?

Tom Lane wrote:

Andreas Fromm <Andreas.Fromm@physik.uni-erlangen.de> writes: 

initdb --locale=de_DE -E UNICODE (tryed LATIN1 also)
FATAL:  invalid value for "lc_messages": "de_DE"   

I'm on a debian/linux box that has many apps with different 
localisations availabel. Does the newest version PgSQL 7.4beta not have 
the localisation support jet?   

No, your problem is that your OS doesn't have complete support for de_DE
locale.  You will need to pick a supported locale for LC_MESSAGES.  I'd
recommend something along the lines of
export LC_ALL=de_DEexport LC_MESSAGES=C		-- or something else that worksinitdb -E UNICODE

You could try just editing the lc_messages setting in postgresql.conf,
but I am not sure whether that will be sufficient; the original initdb
may have suffered internal failures due to the broken locale setting.
Safest to redo it.
		regards, tom lane 

Tryed it out, but the initdb still fails:

$ initdb -E UNICODE --lc-messages=C
The files belonging to this database system will be owned by user "afromm".
This user must also own the server process.

The database cluster will be initialized with locales:
    COLLATE:  de_DE     CTYPE:   de_DE  MESSAGES: C
    MONETARY: de_DE     NUMERIC: de_DE  TIME:     de_DE

fixing permissions on existing directory /home/afromm/devel/pg/data... ok
creating directory /home/afromm/devel/pg/data/base... ok
creating directory /home/afromm/devel/pg/data/global... ok
creating directory /home/afromm/devel/pg/data/pg_xlog... ok
creating directory /home/afromm/devel/pg/data/pg_clog... ok
selecting default shared_buffers... 50
selecting default max_connections... 10
creating configuration files... ok
creating template1 database in /home/afromm/devel/pg/data/base/1... ok
initializing pg_shadow... FATAL:  XX000: failed to initialize lc_messages to ""
LOCATION:  InitializeGUCOptions, guc.c:1871

initdb: failed


without the --lc-messages switch I get the same error. Why doesn't initdb initialize lc_messages, as told, to C rather then ""?

In /etc/locale.gen there is nothing set, but shouldn't I be able to create a UTF-8-aware DB on a machine that doesn't have localisation support at all? The problem is that I don't have root access to this machine.

-- 
Andreas Fromm

-----------------------------
Drink wet cement...          ... and get stoned