tailscale/tailscale · error

locale error: %w

Error message

locale error: %w

What it means

Fired in locale() when running the external `locale` command fails with an error other than exec.ErrNotFound (the binary exists but exited non-zero, or exec failed for another reason); LANG/LC_CTYPE detection fails, so callers cannot determine UTF-8 support.

Source

Thrown at util/qrcodes/qrcodes_linux.go:98

		format = FormatSmall
	}

	return format, nil
}

func locale() (map[string]string, error) {
	locale := map[string]string{
		"LANG":     os.Getenv("LANG"),
		"LC_CTYPE": os.Getenv("LC_CTYPE"),
	}

	cmd := exec.Command("locale")
	out, err := cmd.Output()
	if err != nil {
		if errors.Is(err, exec.ErrNotFound) {
			return locale, nil
		}
		return nil, fmt.Errorf("locale error: %w", err)
	}

	for line := range strings.SplitSeq(string(out), "\n") {
		if line == "" {
			continue
		}
		k, v, found := strings.Cut(line, "=")
		if !found {
			continue
		}
		v, err := strconv.Unquote(v)
		if err != nil {
			continue
		}
		locale[k] = v
	}
	return locale, nil
}

View on GitHub (pinned to 6e0912f979)

Solutions

1. Rely on the pre-populated env-var values (LANG/LC_CTYPE) as fallback
2. Check why `locale` exits non-zero in the environment
3. Treat locale detection as best-effort and skip errors

When it happens

Trigger: Thrown at util/qrcodes/qrcodes_linux.go:98 when the library encounters an invalid state.

Common situations: See trigger scenarios.

AI-assisted analysis of tailscale/tailscale@6e0912f979 (2026-08-18). Data as JSON: /api/errors/a23db484e1ca4395. Report an issue: GitHub.