Bug#526982: gdm: Language set at login ignored

Mon May 4 19:20:47 UTC 2009

Package: gdm
Version: 2.20.9-1
Severity: normal

Hi there,

when I set the language at the login screen to german, it's restarting and the interface is in german. When logging into Gnome however, the desktop and all Gnome applications are in english again.

I understood that the language is somehow controlled by the .dmrc file. It contains 

[Desktop]
Session=gnome
Language=de_DE.UTF-8

which seems correct (and has permission 0600). Also the $GDM_LANG environment variable is set to de_DE.UTF-8 .

This is the output of "locale -a" in a gnome terminal, so german is definitely available.
C
de_DE
de_DE at euro
de_DE.iso88591
de_DE.iso885915 at euro
de_DE.utf8
deutsch
en_US
en_US.iso88591
en_US.iso885915
en_US.utf8
german
POSIX

Output of "locale":
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8

which is the system default.

I have localepurge installed by the way, but I had the german locale enabled eversince, so I don't think it deleted anything missing now.

Regards
 - David

-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (600, 'testing'), (300, 'unstable'), (250, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.29-1-686 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) (ignored: LC_ALL set to en_US.UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages gdm depends on:
ii  adduser                3.110             add and remove users and groups
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]  1.5.26            Debian configuration management sy
ii  gksu                   2.0.2-1           graphical frontend to su
ii  gnome-session [x-sessi 2.22.3-3          The GNOME 2 Session Manager
ii  gnome-terminal [x-term 2.24.3-3          The GNOME 2 terminal emulator appl
hi  konsole [x-terminal-em 4:3.5.9.dfsg.1-6  X terminal emulator for KDE
hi  ksmserver [x-session-m 4:3.5.9.dfsg.1-6  session manager for KDE
hi  kwin [x-window-manager 4:3.5.9.dfsg.1-6  the KDE window manager
ii  libart-2.0-2           2.3.20-2          Library of functions for 2D graphi
ii  libatk1.0-0            1.24.0-2          The ATK accessibility toolkit
ii  libattr1               1:2.4.43-2        Extended attribute shared library
ii  libc6                  2.9-4             GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libcairo2              1.8.6-2+b1        The Cairo 2D vector graphics libra
ii  libdbus-1-3            1.2.12-1          simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  libdbus-glib-1-2       0.80-3            simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  libdmx1                1:1.0.2-3         X11 Distributed Multihead extensio
ii  libfontconfig1         2.6.0-3           generic font configuration library
ii  libfreetype6           2.3.9-4           FreeType 2 font engine, shared lib
ii  libglade2-0            1:2.6.4-1         library to load .glade files at ru
ii  libglib2.0-0           2.20.0-2          The GLib library of C routines
ii  libgnomecanvas2-0      2.20.1.1-1        A powerful object-oriented display
ii  libgtk2.0-0            2.16.1-2          The GTK+ graphical user interface 
ii  libpam-modules         1.0.1-9           Pluggable Authentication Modules f
ii  libpam-runtime         1.0.1-9           Runtime support for the PAM librar
ii  libpam0g               1.0.1-9           Pluggable Authentication Modules l
ii  libpango1.0-0          1.24.0-3+b1       Layout and rendering of internatio
ii  librsvg2-2             2.22.3-2          SAX-based renderer library for SVG
ii  librsvg2-common        2.22.3-2          SAX-based renderer library for SVG
ii  libselinux1            2.0.71-1          SELinux shared libraries
ii  libwrap0               7.6.q-16          Wietse Venema's TCP wrappers libra
ii  libx11-6               2:1.2.1-1         X11 client-side library
ii  libxau6                1:1.0.4-2         X11 authorisation library
ii  libxdmcp6              1:1.0.2-3         X11 Display Manager Control Protoc
ii  libxext6               2:1.0.4-1         X11 miscellaneous extension librar
ii  libxi6                 2:1.2.1-2         X11 Input extension library
ii  libxinerama1           2:1.0.3-2         X11 Xinerama extension library
ii  libxml2                2.7.3.dfsg-1      GNOME XML library
ii  lsb-base               3.2-22            Linux Standard Base 3.2 init scrip
ii  metacity [x-window-man 1:2.24.0-2        A lightweight GTK2 based Window Ma
ii  xterm [x-terminal-emul 242-1             X terminal emulator
ii  zlib1g                 1:1.2.3.3.dfsg-13 compression library - runtime

Versions of packages gdm recommends:
ii  dialog                    1.1-20080819-1 Displays user-friendly dialog boxe
pn  gdm-themes                <none>         (no description available)
ii  whiptail                  0.52.2-11.3    Displays user-friendly dialog boxe
pn  xserver-xephyr | xnest    <none>         (no description available)
ii  xserver-xorg              1:7.4+1        the X.Org X server
ii  zenity                    2.24.1-1       Display graphical dialog boxes fro

Versions of packages gdm suggests:
pn  libpam-gnome-keyring          <none>     (no description available)
ii  locales                       2.9-4      GNU C Library: National Language (
ii  pm-utils                      1.2.5-2    utilities and scripts for power ma

-- debconf information:
  gdm/daemon_name: /usr/bin/gdm
* shared/default-x-display-manager: gdm