debian didn't have the correct locale

This was one of those frustrating things.

root@mxg:~# update-locale
perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
	LANGUAGE = (unset),
	LC_ALL = (unset),
	LC_All = "C.UTF-8",
	LANG = "en_GB.UTF-8"
    are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").

I fixed it with this:

export LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8; export LANG=en_US.UTF-8; export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8; locale-gen en_US.UTF-8

After that, reconfigure dpkg

root@mxg:~# dpkg-reconfigure locales
Generating locales (this might take a while)...
  en_US.UTF-8... done
Generation complete.