I wanted to give a localized lang file for my users. And found this. file -i en.ini.php en.ini.php: text/plain; charset=us-ascii /etc/init.d/httpd HTTPD_LANG=${HTTPD_LANG-"C"} echo $LANG C If i wanted to use utf-8 crafted lang file, system basically hangs at second step. You do not want to disrupt normal script operations at system level, but you are sacrificing the main reason of those language files. How i can make it work now? Can we use utf-8 as a system wide variable? "en_US.UTF-8" Kunth