This is the procedure for configuring localization (locale) for English language and Danish regional setting in FreeBSD. Tested on FreeBSD 14.2 with XFCE 4.20 on 2025-03-31.
Introduction.
I have tested the official FreeBSD handbook procedure. I have tested countless guides and advice from forums, discussions and website. They have all failed to meet my basic requirements: English language and Danish regional setting in system console, window manager and applications. See my test below. I wanted Danish ISO 8601 standard format for date, time and numbers. This is also known as YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS. I did not want to see US imperial format for date, time and numbers. I suddently had an idea of hacking an existing English locale and simply linking to a Danish for regional setting. It turned out to work perfect.
What is a locale setting?
A locale setting is made up of the language, the regional setting and the character encoding standard. As an example, en_DK.UTF-8 locale would be for user, who prefer English language in a Danish regional setting with the UTF-8 character encoding standard.
Locale specific information can be proveded with the locale utility. It is important to know, that the utility respect the PATH_LOCALE environment variable. If this is set, then this is used instead of the default locale directory.
# locale -a | grep DK
da_DK.ISO8859-1
da_DK.ISO8859-15
da_DK.UTF-8
Create a new locale.
Create a new locale definition, that is based on English. This new locale definition will be English language with Danish regional setting and UTF-8 character encoding standard.
# cd /usr/share/locale/
# mkdir -p en_DK.UTF-8
# cp -r en_GB.UTF-8/* en_DK.UTF-8/
Link to Danish regional setting.
For time format, numeric format and monetary format, create symbolic links to the Danish locale definition.
# cd en_DK.UTF-8/
# ls
LC_COLLATE LC_CTYPE LC_MESSAGES LC_MONETARY LC_NUMERIC LC_TIME
# ln -sf ../da_DK.UTF-8/LC_TIME .
# ln -sf ../da_DK.UTF-8/LC_NUMERIC .
# ln -sf ../da_DK.UTF-8/LC_MONETARY .
Confirm new locale.
# locale -a | grep DK
da_DK.ISO8859-1
da_DK.ISO8859-15
da_DK.UTF-8
en_DK.UTF-8
Configure FreeBSD login class for English language and Danish regional setting locale.
Configure the FreeBSD login class for English language, Danish regional setting and UTF-8 character encoding standard. This will work for system console, window manager and applications without further configuration. Examples are XFCE and Thunderbird Mail.
# nano /etc/login.conf
default:\
:passwd_format=sha512:\
:copyright=/etc/COPYRIGHT:\
:welcome=/var/run/motd:\
:setenv=BLOCKSIZE=K:\
:mail=/var/mail/$:\
:path=/sbin /bin /usr/sbin /usr/bin /usr/local/sbin /usr/local/bin ~/bin:\
:nologin=/var/run/nologin:\
:cputime=unlimited:\
:datasize=unlimited:\
:stacksize=unlimited:\
:memorylocked=64K:\
:memoryuse=unlimited:\
:filesize=unlimited:\
:coredumpsize=unlimited:\
:openfiles=unlimited:\
:maxproc=unlimited:\
:sbsize=unlimited:\
:vmemoryuse=unlimited:\
:swapuse=unlimited:\
:pseudoterminals=unlimited:\
:kqueues=unlimited:\
:umtxp=unlimited:\
:pipebuf=unlimited:\
:priority=0:\
:ignoretime@:\
:umask=022:\
:charset=UTF-8:\
:lang=en_DK.UTF-8:
Apply the changes by running the capability database utility.
# cap_mkdb /etc/login.conf
Test English language and Danish regional settings.
You can now log out of all virtual terminals and system consoles and test, that the new locale works.
- English language in FreeBSD system console.
- Danish special characters input in FreeBSD system console.
- Danish special characters output in FreeBSD system console.
- Danish ISO 8601 date and time format in FreeBSD system console.
- Danish number format in FreeBSD system console.
- English language in XFCE window manager menu, panels and dialogs.
- Danish ISO 8601 date and time format in XFCE window manager.
- English language in Thunderbird Mail.
- Danish ISO 8601 date and time format in Thunderbird Mail.
- Danish number format in Thunderbird Mail.
Backup and restore the new locale.
Create a backup of the new locale. This ensures, that it can be restored, if it should get deleted. It can also be used to install on another host.
# tar -cvpzf ~/en_DK.UTF-8.tar.gz -C /usr/share/locale en_DK.UTF-8
a en_DK.UTF-8
a en_DK.UTF-8/LC_COLLATE
a en_DK.UTF-8/LC_TIME
a en_DK.UTF-8/LC_CTYPE
a en_DK.UTF-8/LC_MONETARY
a en_DK.UTF-8/LC_NUMERIC
a en_DK.UTF-8/LC_MESSAGES
The content can be confirmed.
# tar -tvf ~/en_DK.UTF-8.tar.gz
The locale setting can be restored.
# tar -xvpzf ~/en_DK.UTF-8.tar.gz -C /usr/share/locale
x en_DK.UTF-8/
x en_DK.UTF-8/LC_COLLATE
x en_DK.UTF-8/LC_TIME
x en_DK.UTF-8/LC_CTYPE
x en_DK.UTF-8/LC_MONETARY
x en_DK.UTF-8/LC_NUMERIC
x en_DK.UTF-8/LC_MESSAGES
Issue: Port misc/locale-en_DK not working.
I tested the official port and package misc/locale-en_DK. This failed Danish special characters input in FreeBSD system console. I even spent extra time testing custom environment variables.
# pkg install locale-en_DK
Message from locale-en_DK-0.1.1:
In order to set the en_DK.UTF-8 locale for the login shell of an single
user add the following configuration to ~/.login_conf:
me:\
:charset=UTF-8:\
:lang=en_DK.UTF-8:\
:setenv=PATH_LOCALE=/usr/local/share/locale:
More information about the process of configuring login class methods in
available in the handbook.
More information about the PATH_LOCALE environment variable is available in the
locale(1) manual page.
