GDM_LANG overrides my locales

There's a very similar bug in maverick, see Bug #746796. The important part of the problem seems to be that we upgraded from a backported gdm version to a security update gdm version.
See Sebastion Bacher's comment in the duplicate.

Csipak Attila is right. I have prepared new gdm branches for lucid-backports and maverick-backports, and linked them to this bug report.

As this is only an issue affecting -backports, I'm closing the distro task.

Additional info: The branches were uploaded to my ppa, where they built fine. I have successfully installed and run the resulting binaries in both Lucid and Maverick.

This is just merging the recent security update, so this looks fine for backports. Will upload, thanks!

Accepted your gdm package, thanks! I verified that it just merges the security update.

Likewise for the lucid update.

Fix confirmed. Works as expected. Thanks!

Thanks for the confirmation, Eimann!

To all:
What you need to do if you were hit by the issue in this bug is to update the package information in Synaptic or Update Manager or via "sudo apt-get update" in a terminal window. Then, if you upgrade again, the issue should be resolved.

Installed the backport gdm update today and noticed that my weather applet changed from Fahrenheit to Celsius.
$ apt-cache policy gdm
gdm:
  Installed: 2.30.5-0ubuntu4.1+langfixes~maverick1
  Candidate: 2.30.5-0ubuntu4.1+langfixes~maverick1
  Version table:
 *** 2.30.5-0ubuntu4.1+langfixes~maverick1 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick-backports/main i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     2.30.5-0ubuntu4.1 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick-updates/main i386 Packages
        500 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick-security/main i386 Packages
     2.30.5-0ubuntu4 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick/main i386 Packages

Local is now showing same/similar 'Cannot set' errors to those of bug #746796:
$ locale
locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: No such file or directory
locale: Cannot set LC_MESSAGES to default locale: No such file or directory
locale: Cannot set LC_ALL to default locale: No such file or directory
LANG=en_US
LANGUAGE=en_US:en
LC_CTYPE="en_US"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US"
LC_TIME="en_US"
LC_COLLATE="en_US"
LC_MONETARY="en_US"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US"
LC_PAPER="en_US"
LC_NAME="en_US"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US"
LC_ALL=

locale _should_ be:
$ locale
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=en_US:en
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=

Interesting... The problem does not occur on my 64bit machine, only on the 32bit.

 apt-cache policy gdm
gdm:
  Installed: 2.30.5-0ubuntu4.1+langfixes~maverick1
  Candidate: 2.30.5-0ubuntu4.1+langfixes~maverick1
  Version table:
 *** 2.30.5-0ubuntu4.1+langfixes~maverick1 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick-backports/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     2.30.5-0ubuntu4.1 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick-updates/main amd64 Packages
        500 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick-security/main amd64 Packages
     2.30.5-0ubuntu4 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick/main amd64 Packages
gg@gg-laptop:~$ locale
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=en_US:en
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=

The update on the 64bit machine did not show as being from Backports on the Udate Manager as it does on the 32bit machines. Remove Backports on the 64bit machine and the 2.30.5-0ubuntu4.1+langfixes~maverick1 still shows (under Security). Installed w/o issue. On the 32bit machines the issue from my comment #11 remains & had to use 'dpkg-reconfigure -a' to get all working again as 'dpkg-reconfigure locale' did not stick on logout/reboot.

The LANG environment variable must have a valid locale name, or else many i18n things are screwed up.

To users, who have chosen to receive backports updates, a surprising security update resulted effectively in a (temporary) downgrade with respect to the language related stuff in the backports gdm package, since the backports package was suddenly not the latest gdm version. That's what caused the invalid LANG value.

To clean it up, once you have installed version 2.30.2.is.2.30.0-0ubuntu5.1+langfixes~lucid1 or 2.30.5-0ubuntu4.1+langfixes~maverick1, following these steps should suffice:

* Open Language Support
  System -> Administration -> Language Support

* Select the "Regional Formats" tab

* Change the setting one or more times

* Log out and log in again

I don't know anything about the weather applet, though. Maybe, for the case you have never set the temperature unit explicitly, there is a default which is affected by one of the LC_* variables. ;-)

A security update should never break the system.
Actual GDM doesn't allow choose a language nor change the theme, so why change the system language?
The security update is a faulty update.

Simon,

I think you should read up on backports in general.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuBackports

I have read and... You're saying that the correct version of GDM is not in the backports?

I repeat the question: Actual GDM (at least on Lucid) doesn't allow choose a language nor change the theme, so why change the system language?

The difference between backports gdm and the other gdm branches is basically code that I wrote, so I hope it's not less correct. ;-)

To be honest, I don't quite understand the question. By "actual" GDM, do you refer to backports or something else? And doesn't allow you to choose a language... Could you please elaborate?

GDM in Lucid has a theme and it doesn't allow to change the theme.
That theme it only allows:
1) Change of user.
2) Activate the accessibility options.
3) Reboot/Shutdown.

It doesn't permit change the type of gnome session, the language,...
I refer to the GDM actual: backport or security is indifferent (both has the same theme and behaviour in this sense).

Can you change the language from GDM? Can you change the GDM theme?
And I don't speak about hacks.

Writing this in my just updated Lucid installation.

As regards theme, I have never changed it. When on the login screen, after having clicked my name, the bottom pane shows three widgets: Language, Keyboard layout and Session. If you don't see those, maybe the theme you are using is broken?

And yes, with gdm 2.30.2.is.2.30.0-0ubuntu5.1+langfixes~lucid1 it's easy to change the language from the login screen. With gdm 2.30.2.is.2.30.0-0ubuntu5.1, the widget is there, but trying to change language from the login screen does not always give the expected result. That's one of the reasons for the backports.

I don't know how I would change the GDM theme, so I can't tell if there is an issue in that respect.

It just struck me... When you say "theme", could you possibly mean that you are using the Netbook desktop instead of GNOME? I did that a couple of months, but I don't remember which controls that were available. Now that options is not there any longer.

I have activated login without password entry.
When I click in my name, gdm enter in my gnome session, without it allows me to change anything.

I have only one gdm* package installed: the gdm itself. No additional gdm theme.
My theme is default Ubuntu theme. It looks like this: http://goo.gl/wbFsp but with this background/colors: http://goo.gl/s1KG5

On 2011-04-02 14:10, Simon wrote:
> I have activated login without password entry.
> When I click in my name, gdm enter in my gnome session, without it
> allows me to change anything.

Aha, that phenomenon is discussed in bug report
https://launchpad.net/bugs/508552

Maybe you should subscribe to that bug. The temporary issue you
encountered due to the security update and backports ought to be
resolved also for you, right?

As regards the look of the login screen, it seems to be the same as I have.

ok, yes, that is the issue.
Thanks.