[Pkg-xfce-devel] Bug#735251: lightdm: user locale tweaks are clobbered by non-default locale

[Olaf Meeuwissen]

Package: lightdm
Version: 1.8.5-3
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

I have seen #690899, #691446 and #733261 but feel that my issue is not
quite the same.  Hence a separate bug report.

I have a few locale tweaks in my ~/.xsessionrc (following comments found
in /etc/X11/Xsession.d/40x11-common_xsessionrc).  The relevant bit of my
customizations:

  export LANG=ja_JP.UTF-8
  export LC_MESSAGES=en_GB.UTF-8
  export LANGUAGE=${LC_MESSAGES}

This has been working great for me for several years.  After the recent
upgrade of lightdm (from 1.6.3-1) the LANG setting got clobbered to the
first enabled locale, i.c. aa_DJ.UTF-8, whereas the system default is C.

The system default locale and enabled locales have not been changed in
a long time, nor has my .xsessionrc.  What might have played a role
was me removing my ~/.dmrc at about the same point as the upgrade as
part of a dot-file cleanup.  Changing its Language setting to the same
value as the LANG setting in my ~/.xsessionrc fixed things for me.

I would expect the preselected locale for lightdm's locale selector to
be the system default (or whatever is configured explicitly for that bit
of lightdm functionality), not whichever of the enabled locales is
listed first in /etc/locale.gen.  The system default would then become
the user's locale if a user does not have a ~/.dmrc file.  Also, I would
expect any tweaks in a user's ~/.xsessionrc to take effect/precedence
and not be clobbered by any locale functionality courtesy of lightdm.

That is to say, I would expect my LANG setting in ~/.xsessionrc to take
precedence over whatever is (or ends up) in ~/.dmrc.  If I have nothing
in my ~/.xsessionrc, I expect to end up with what is configured in
/etc/default/locale.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: jessie/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 3.11-2-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=ja_JP.utf8, LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages lightdm depends on:
ii  adduser                                3.113+nmu3
ii  consolekit                             0.4.6-3+b1
ii  dbus                                   1.6.18-2
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]                  1.5.52
ii  libc6                                  2.17-97
ii  libgcrypt11                            1.5.3-3
ii  libglib2.0-0                           2.36.4-1
ii  libpam0g                               1.1.3-9
ii  libxcb1                                1.10-2
ii  libxdmcp6                              1:1.1.1-1
ii  lightdm-gtk-greeter [lightdm-greeter]  1.6.1-5

Versions of packages lightdm recommends:
ii  xserver-xorg  1:7.7+5

Versions of packages lightdm suggests:
pn  accountsservice  <none>
ii  upower           0.9.23-2+b1

-- debconf information:
* shared/default-x-display-manager: lightdm
  lightdm/daemon_name: /usr/sbin/lightdm

-- 
Olaf Meeuwissen, LPIC-2           FLOSS Engineer -- AVASYS CORPORATION
FSF Associate Member #1962               Help support software freedom
                 http://www.fsf.org/jf?referrer=1962