Bug#905084: grub-common: Generates grub config with unusable "lang"

[Christopher David Howie]

Package: grub-common
Version: 2.02~beta3-5

Context: My system has two bootable disks, each with a GPT label and two
partitions: 1 is a BIOS boot partition, and 2 is a dmraid raid1.

The raid device is an LVM PV.  Within that lies the root volume.

I mention this because it may be revelant; none of my other Debian
systems have this problem, and this configuration is the most unique
across my systems.

tl;dr: update-grub generates a grub.cfg with "set lang=en_US" which grub
itself apparently does not like, as I get dropped to a grub shell when
this line is present.  "set lang=C" works fine.

Running update-grub from within the system itself causes the "set
lang=en_US" line to be present, which means installing a new kernel
package will cause the machine not to come back up after rebooting.

Running update-grub from the installer CD in rescue mode while chrooted
into the system creates an identical grub.cfg, with the exception of
this one line, which is instead "set lang=C".  This works and the system
will boot.

I debated whether to file this bug against grub-common or grub2-common;
I chose the former because it contains /etc/grub.d/00_header, which is
where this line comes from.

I note that there is no en_US.mo in /boot/grub/locale, which is
ostensibly the reason grub will not boot.

It seems like 00_header and/or update-grub should check if
/boot/grub/locale/{$grub_lang}.mo exists, attempt to install it if it
does not, and fall back on the C locale if this can't be done.

(As an aside, it's strange to me that grub chooses to fall on its face
when it can't load a locale file instead of spitting a warning and
continuing with the built-in C locale.  I can't imagine a scenario where
it would be beneficial for the bootloader to halt when it can't load a
translation that, assuming the boot process is successful, will only be
seen for a few seconds.  It seems a bit like a car refusing to start
because the paint is the wrong color.)

-- 
Chris Howie
http://www.chrishowie.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Crazycomputers

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