Locale Ansible Role¶

Manage system locale on Debian-based systems using only built-in modules:

Generate required locales by editing /etc/locale.gen and running locale-gen
Set the default system locale by ensuring /etc/default/locale contains LANG and optional LC_* pairs

Installation (role)¶

roles:
  - name: locale
    src: https://gitlab.com/niclas-zone/tools/ansible/roles/locale.git
    version: 1.0.0
    scm: git

Role Variables¶

Variable	Default	Type	Description
`locale_lang`	`de_CH.UTF-8`	string	Default LANG to set
`locale_environment`	see defaults	dict	Extra LC_* pairs to set (e.g., LC_TIME, etc.). Empty values are ignored.
`locale_generate`	`[locale_lang]`	list	Locales to generate (e.g., `de_CH.UTF-8`, `en_US.UTF-8`)
`locale_default_charset`	`UTF-8`	string	Charset appended in `/etc/locale.gen` when not present in the locale string

Notes:

For /etc/locale.gen, the role writes lines like de_CH.UTF-8 UTF-8. If a locale in locale_generate already includes a charset (e.g., de_CH.ISO-8859-1), that charset is used; otherwise locale_default_charset is applied.
/etc/default/locale lines are written as KEY="VALUE".

Example Playbooks¶

Basic (Swiss German)¶

- hosts: servers
  become: true
  roles:
    - role: locale

Custom locale¶

- hosts: servers
  become: true
  roles:
    - role: locale
      vars:
        locale_lang: "en_GB.UTF-8"
        locale_environment:
          LC_TIME: "en_GB.UTF-8"
        locale_generate:
          - "en_GB.UTF-8"
          - "de_CH.UTF-8"

British English language, Swiss German LC_*¶

- hosts: servers
  become: true
  roles:
    - role: locale
      vars:
        locale_lang: "en_GB.UTF-8"
        locale_environment:
          LC_TIME: "de_CH.UTF-8"
          LC_NUMERIC: "de_CH.UTF-8"
          LC_MONETARY: "de_CH.UTF-8"
          LC_PAPER: "de_CH.UTF-8"
          LC_MEASUREMENT: "de_CH.UTF-8"
        locale_generate:
          - "en_GB.UTF-8"
          - "de_CH.UTF-8"

Note: Keyboard layout is not managed by locales; configure it separately (e.g., console-setup or XKB).