Meteor mongod not starting on Debian+Docker, problem solution history

gistfile1.txt

$ meteor
=> Started proxy.                             
Unexpected mongo exit code 1. Restarting.     
Unexpected mongo exit code 1. Restarting.     
Unexpected mongo exit code 1. Restarting.     
Can't start Mongo server.                     
MongoDB failed global initialization

--

$ export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8
bash: warning: setlocale: LC_ALL: cannot change locale (en_US.UTF-8): No such file or directory

--

$ cat /etc/default/locale 
$  File generated by update-locale

$ sudo sh -c "echo -e 'LANG=en_US.UTF-8\nLC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8' > /etc/default/locale" 
$ bash
bash: warning: setlocale: LC_ALL: cannot change locale (en_US.UTF-8)

--

$ perl -e exit
perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
	LANGUAGE = (unset),
	LC_ALL = (unset),
	LANG = "de_DE.utf8"
    are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").

--

$ dpkg-reconfigure locale
perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
	LANGUAGE = (unset),
	LC_ALL = (unset),
	LANG = "de_DE.utf8"
    are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: No such file or directory
locale: Cannot set LC_MESSAGES to default locale: No such file or directory
locale: Cannot set LC_ALL to default locale: No such file or directory
dpkg-query: package 'locale' is not installed and no information is available
Use dpkg --info (= dpkg-deb --info) to examine archive files,
and dpkg --contents (= dpkg-deb --contents) to list their contents.
/usr/sbin/dpkg-reconfigure: locale is not installed

--

$ locale-gen en_US.UTF-8
Generating locales (this might take a while)...
  en_GB.utf8...character map file `utf8' not found: No such file or directory
circular dependencies between locale definitions
 done
Generation complete.

--

localedef -i de_DE -f UTF-8 en_US.UTF-8

worked the problem out on a Docker container on a
3.19.0-trunk-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 3.19.3-1~exp1 (2015-03-29)

I haven't understood, these coman, localedef put en_US as the new locale for the system?

I'm currently seeing this issue in a docker container created from a ubuntu:16.04 image. I resolved it like this in my Dockerfile:

FROM ubuntu:16.04
ENV OS_LOCALE="en_US.UTF-8"
RUN locale-gen ${OS_LOCALE}
ENV LANG=${OS_LOCALE}
LANGUAGE=en_US:en
LC_ALL=${OS_LOCALE}
RUN apt-get update && apt-get -y install curl locales && curl https://install.meteor.com/ | sh