Bug#647230: gdm: language chooser uses wrong locale (UTF-8 vs utf8)

[John Feuerstein]

Package: gdm
Version: 2.20.11-4
Severity: normal

# dpkg-reconfigure locales
Generating locales (this might take a while)...
  de_DE.UTF-8... done
  en_US.UTF-8... done
Generation complete.

# cat /etc/default/locale 
#  File generated by update-locale
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LANGUAGE="en_US:en"

# locale -a
C
de_DE.utf8
en_US.utf8
POSIX

# /etc/init.d/gdm start

On the login screen, select language "German", then continue to
log in.  After login (just before starting the session), the following
error window pops up and the resulting language and locale settings are
back to the global system default:

  "Language de_DE.UTF-8 does not exist; using System default"

The problem here is "UTF-8" in the locale name, the correct name (see
above) is "de_DE.utf8".

Patching /etc/gdm/locale.conf fixes that:

-German(Germany) de_DE.UTF-8
+German(Germany) de_DE.utf8

After restarting gdm, selecting the language, and logging in, the
xsession is started correctly and LANG and the locale settings are
configured as expected.

I'm not sure if this is the correct fix. If so, all the other locales
in this file should be fixed too. Another idea would be to add aliases
for all locales, i.e. add "foo.UTF-8 foo.utf8" to /etc/locale.alias. And
another one would be to normalize the locale name before validating the
language...


-- System Information:
Debian Release: 6.0.3
  APT prefers stable-updates
  APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-5-686 (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages gdm depends on:
ii  adduser            3.112+nmu2            add and remove users and groups
ii  debconf [debconf-2 1.5.36.1              Debian configuration management sy
ii  gksu               2.0.2-5               graphical frontend to su
ii  gnome-terminal [x- 2.30.2-1              The GNOME terminal emulator applic
ii  libart-2.0-2       2.3.21-1              Library of functions for 2D graphi
ii  libatk1.0-0        1.30.0-1              The ATK accessibility toolkit
ii  libattr1           1:2.4.44-2            Extended attribute shared library
ii  libc6              2.11.2-10             Embedded GNU C Library: Shared lib
ii  libcairo2          1.8.10-6              The Cairo 2D vector graphics libra
ii  libdbus-1-3        1.2.24-4+squeeze1     simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  libdbus-glib-1-2   0.88-2.1              simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  libdmx1            1:1.1.0-2             X11 Distributed Multihead extensio
ii  libfontconfig1     2.8.0-2.1             generic font configuration library
ii  libfreetype6       2.4.2-2.1+squeeze2    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       2.24.2-1              The GLib library of C routines
ii  libgnomecanvas2-0  2.30.1-1              A powerful object-oriented display
ii  libgtk2.0-0        2.20.1-2              The GTK+ graphical user interface 
ii  libpam-modules     1.1.1-6.1+squeeze1    Pluggable Authentication Modules f
ii  libpam-runtime     1.1.1-6.1+squeeze1    Runtime support for the PAM librar
ii  libpam0g           1.1.1-6.1+squeeze1    Pluggable Authentication Modules l
ii  libpango1.0-0      1.28.3-1+squeeze2     Layout and rendering of internatio
ii  librsvg2-2         2.26.3-1              SAX-based renderer library for SVG
ii  librsvg2-common    2.26.3-1              SAX-based renderer library for SVG
ii  libselinux1        2.0.96-1              SELinux runtime shared libraries
ii  libwrap0           7.6.q-19              Wietse Venema's TCP wrappers libra
ii  libx11-6           2:1.3.3-4             X11 client-side library
ii  libxau6            1:1.0.6-1             X11 authorisation library
ii  libxdmcp6          1:1.0.3-2             X11 Display Manager Control Protoc
ii  libxext6           2:1.1.2-1             X11 miscellaneous extension librar
ii  libxi6             2:1.3-6               X11 Input extension library
ii  libxinerama1       2:1.1-3               X11 Xinerama extension library
ii  libxml2            2.7.8.dfsg-2+squeeze1 GNOME XML library
ii  lsb-base           3.2-23.2squeeze1      Linux Standard Base 3.2 init scrip
ii  metacity [x-window 1:2.30.1-3            lightweight GTK+ window manager
ii  twm [x-window-mana 1:1.0.4-2             Tab window manager
ii  xfce4-session [x-s 4.6.2-3               Xfce4 Session Manager
ii  xfce4-terminal [x- 0.4.5-1               Xfce terminal emulator
ii  xfwm4 [x-window-ma 4.6.2-1               window manager of the Xfce project
ii  xterm [x-terminal- 261-1                 X terminal emulator

Versions of packages gdm recommends:
ii  gdm-themes                    0.6.2      Themes for the GNOME Display Manag
ii  whiptail                      0.52.11-1  Displays user-friendly dialog boxe
ii  xserver-xephyr                2:1.7.7-13 nested X server
ii  xserver-xorg                  1:7.5+8    the X.Org X server
ii  zenity                        2.30.0-1   Display graphical dialog boxes fro

Versions of packages gdm suggests:
ii  libpam-gnome-keyring          2.30.3-5   PAM module to unlock the GNOME key
ii  locales                       2.11.2-10  Embedded GNU C Library: National L
ii  pm-utils                      1.3.0-3    utilities and scripts for power ma

-- 
John Feuerstein <john at feurix.com>