The following bug has been logged online:

Bug reference: 2071
Logged by: Prakash Nair
Email address: prakashblr@hotmail.com
PostgreSQL version: 8.0.4
Operating system: RHES
Description: ERROR: invalid multibyte character for locale
Details:

Hello,

Got the error in postgres console when we do a lower() or upper().

Postgres console gives following error,

ERROR: invalid multibyte character for locale
HINT: The server's LC_CTYPE locale is probably incompatible with the
database encoding.

Can any one please help me, I need to use Unicode encoding for my database.
(Not able to upgrade to postgres 8.10. as I was getting someother issues
when I try to restore database)

Looks forward for anyone's fast reply.

Thanks,
Prakash

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On Fri, Nov 25, 2005 at 11:55:44AM +0000, Prakash Nair wrote:
>
> The following bug has been logged online:
>
> Bug reference: 2071
> Logged by: Prakash Nair
> Email address: prakashblr@hotmail.com
> PostgreSQL version: 8.0.4
> Operating system: RHES
> Description: ERROR: invalid multibyte character for locale
> Details:
>
> Hello,
>
> Got the error in postgres console when we do a lower() or upper().
>
> Postgres console gives following error,
>
> ERROR: invalid multibyte character for locale
> HINT: The server's LC_CTYPE locale is probably incompatible with the
> database encoding.
>
> Can any one please help me, I need to use Unicode encoding for my database.
> (Not able to upgrade to postgres 8.10. as I was getting someother issues
> when I try to restore database)

See the related, previous post.

Basically there are four places where encoding might be relevant:

- Did you create the database in utf-8 encoding? (probably yes)

- What is the nevironment of the server process? That is: what does the
shell command 'locale' say when it is issued in the same environment
as the server starts? (that is not necessarily the environment you get
if you start a shell!). Try, e.g. putting ''export LANG=us_US.UTF-8''
just before the server is called (typically in /etc/init.d/postgresql
or thereabout.

- What is your client's encoding (issue the SQL command ''SHOW
CLIENT_ENCODING'' to learn about that (or ''SET CLIENT_ENCODING'' to
change that)

- What is the locale of your client? (if it's on an unix-like system,
see above. Otherwise I have no idea).

Hope that helps
-- tomas


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tomas@tuxteam.de (Tomas Zerolo) writes:
> - What is the nevironment of the server process? That is: what does the
> shell command 'locale' say when it is issued in the same environment
> as the server starts? (that is not necessarily the environment you get
> if you start a shell!). Try, e.g. putting ''export LANG=us_US.UTF-8''
> just before the server is called (typically in /etc/init.d/postgresql
> or thereabout.

In recent PG versions you can do SHOW LC_COLLATE and/or SHOW LC_CTYPE
to verify the locale settings the server is using. Note that these are
locked down based on the environment seen by initdb --- you can't change
them just by inserting an environment setting into the postmaster start
script.

regards, tom lane

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