[Pkg-xfce-devel] Bug#733261: Bug#733261: Bug#733261: lightdm lost ability not to set LANG

[Yves-Alexis Perez]

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On Sun, Dec 29, 2013 at 10:15:45PM +0100, Martin Dickopp wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 28, 2013 at 11:45:30PM +0100, Yves-Alexis Perez wrote:
> > On Fri, Dec 27, 2013 at 10:38:33PM +0100, Martin Dickopp wrote:
> > > Package: lightdm
> > > Version: 1.8.5-2
> > > Severity: normal
> > > 
> > > Hello,
> > > 
> > > It seems that LightDM lost the ability not to set the LANG environment
> > > variable with the 1.6.3-1 -> 1.8.5-2 upgrade.
> > > 
> > > My system is configured as follows:
> > > 
> > > $ cat /etc/default/locale
> > > LC_CTYPE=C.UTF-8
> > > $ grep -v ^# /etc/locale.gen
> > > 
> > > de_DE ISO-8859-1
> > > de_DE.UTF-8 UTF-8
> > > en_US ISO-8859-1
> > > en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8
> > > 
> > > I have disabled the language selector in
> > > /etc/lightdm/lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf (show-language-selector=false).
> > > 
> > > Observed behavior: After logging in, the LANG environment variable is set
> > > to "de_DE.utf8", which appears to be based on one of the entries (maybe
> > > the first) in /etc/locale.gen.
> > > 
> > > Expected behavior: LANG unset, or set to something neutral like "C" or
> > > "POSIX".
> > 
> > Do you have a .dmrc? Can you paste the content?
> 
> $ cat ~/.dmrc
> 
> [Desktop]
> Session=lightdm-xsession
> Language=de_DE.utf8
> 
> If I remove the file and restart lightdm, it is recreated with the same
> content. After some experimentation, I found that lightdm keeps another
> copy of the file in /var/cache/lightdm/dmrc. Removing both ~/.dmrc and
> /var/cache/lightdm/dmrc/martin.dmrc resolves the issue!

> While my immediate issue is resolved, I still find this behavior
> unfortunate for three reasons:
> 
> - Recreating a file a user has deleted from a shadow copy is probably as
>   surprising to many users as it has been to me. :-)

It's actually not exactly what happens. The file from /var/cache is the
last settings used by lightdm. They're used as a default, and are
overriden by:

- - the last user-selected choice when it exists;
- - the menu-selected choice;

In your case, it wasn't overriden by anything, that's all. The behavior
changed in order to actuall correctly support overriding it, because
most people actually want the locale to be set, not the opposite.

> - While I'm also "root" on the machine in question, most users don't have
>   write permission in /var/cache/lightdm/dmrc.
> 
> - According to my understanding, programs must handle files stored under
>   /var/cache going away (e.g. /var/cache can be omitted from backups).
>   It's therefore surprising that removal of a file under /var/cache
>   changes the behavior.

I don't think it's surprising at all, actually. It doesn't mean the file
*needs* to be there, it's just nice to have it.

Regards,
- -- 
Yves-Alexis Perez
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