SetLanguage(): Write ~/.pam_environment instead of ~/.profile

This does sound interesting. As you know, I'd like to drop ~/.profile for the purpose, but so far I have had a few new accountsservice properties in mind instead. One advantage with using a-s is that the locales can be set correctly even if $HOME can't be accessed. Isn't that one of the reasons why accountsservice exists, btw?

Anyway, something new to consider.

In the case of some new accountsservice properties, I suppose that PAM can still be used to get the values and set the environment.

This is absolutely the correct place to set it as this means the locale is set correctly from the beginning of authentication throughout the entire session.

Gunnar Hjalmarsson [2011-10-04 20:16 -0000]:
> This does sound interesting. As you know, I'd like to drop ~/.profile
> for the purpose, but so far I have had a few new accountsservice
> properties in mind instead. One advantage with using a-s is that the
> locales can be set correctly even if $HOME can't be accessed.

If we can't access $HOME, we can't start a session, so that's not an
issue. It is only an issue if we want to implement a language selector
in the lightdm greeter, but then we can ask accountsservice.

Another disadvantage of ~/.profile is that bash doesn't always read it. In fact this is noted at the top of that file itself (at least in my version).
I have some problems with the regional language settings (I want time/date in Dutch but text messages in English), but when I set the regional settings (with xubuntu's Applications > Settings > Language Support), suddenly Firefox and other things started to be in Dutch as well. In a terminal, far too many LC_* settings were suddenly nl_NL.UTF-8, according to the locale command. For a proper bug report, I wanted to reproduce this in a clean test account but I couldn't.
I suspect now that the fact that I have a ~/.bash_login file has something to do with it (so ~/.profile isn't read, or isn't always read, or something).
It's annoying that one can only test this by logging out; I can't quite seem to reproduce it in the test login either.

Am 2011-10-18 12:46, schrieb Rhialto:
> I have some problems with the regional language settings (I want
> time/date in Dutch but text messages in English), but when I set the
> regional settings (with xubuntu's Applications > Settings > Language
> Support), suddenly Firefox and other things started to be in Dutch as
> well.

If you experience that behavior Oneiric (where it should not be possible) it does sound like ~/.profile is not read, so you probably should get that fixed.

But if you are the only user, even without ~/.profile you should be able to get the desired combination by clicking "Apply System-Wide" from the "Language" tab in Language Support.

by the way, that method of modifying ~/.profile breaks its contents since it replaces _all_ occurences of that export entries.

This makes it impossible to share .profile files between different computers with different language settings, even if it contains case-instructions for the different computers. It even destroys the old settings, and loss of data is usually to be considered as a severe and important bug.

Automatically modifying user-written shell scripts is an absolute no-go and really broken by design. This design decision should have never been made.

There's lots of better files for doing that. Files in /etc/X11/Xsession.d read things like ~/.gnomerc or ~/.xsessionrc which would be much better (or even use a specific file for language settings), but under all circumstances keep fingers from ~/.profile.

Even worse, this affects the settings if someone is logging in through ssh or with other desktops.

This is not just bad design, this is really a bug.

regards

This bug was fixed in the package accountsservice - 0.6.15-2ubuntu3

---------------
accountsservice (0.6.15-2ubuntu3) precise; urgency=low

  [ Gunnar Hjalmarsson ]
  * debian/patches/0001-formats-locale-property.patch and
    debian/libaccountsservice0.symbols:
    - Addition of FormatsLocale property and SetFormatsLocale method.
  * debian/patches/0009-language-tools.patch:
    - Make SetLanguage() and SetFormatsLocale() write to
      ~/.pam_environment instead of ~/.profile (LP: #866062).
    - Make the LANG variable, which up to now has represented regional
      formats, denote the display language instead (LP: #877610).
  * debian/patches/0010-set-language.patch:
    - If the Language or FormatsLocale property is not yet set when
      queried, respond with a sensible, dynamically generated fallback
      value.
    - Code added for migrating ~/.profile environment settings to
      ~/.pam_environment.
    - Don't alter any settings if SetLanguage is called from a language
      chooser on the greeter and /home is encrypted or not yet mounted.
    - Misc. code refactoring.
  * debian/accountsservice.postinst:
    - Modify /etc/default/locale and /etc/environment due to a changed
      meaning of the LANG environment variable.

  [ Martin Pitt ]
  * debian/accountsservice.postinst: Only run the LANG migration when
    upgrading to this version. Also, slightly improve the call to grep.
  * debian/libaccountsservice0.symbols: Fix versions of symbols from
    0001-formats-locale-property.patch.
  * debian/libaccountsservice0.symbols: Add new symbols from 0.6.15-2ubuntu1.
  * debian/accountsservice.postinst: In the LANG migration, do not add all the
    variables to a file which doesn't define LANG, so that we don't repeat
    them in /etc/environment when they are already in /etc/default/locale.
 -- Martin Pitt <email address hidden> Fri, 03 Feb 2012 06:42:19 +0100

This bug was fixed in the package language-selector - 0.63

---------------
language-selector (0.63) precise; urgency=low

  [ Martin Pitt ]
  * LanguageSelector/LanguageSelector.py: Fix KeyError crash on a nonexisting
    package. (LP: #843430)
  * language_support_pkgs.py: Add PackageKit WhatProvides() plugin for
    "locale()" search. Register it in setup.py.
  * LanguageSelector/LangCache.py, data/blacklist, setup.py: Drop support for
    data/blacklist, we haven't needed it for a long time, and don't intend to
    bring back this hack.
  * dbus_backend/ls-dbus-backend: Drop GetMissingPackages{,Async} methods. The
    current code isn't using them, and there is no need to have this in a
    D-BUS service. language_support_pkgs works fine as user in frontends.
  * Drop tests/test_dbus_backend.py. It only exercised above method, not the
    "set system-wide locale" bits.
  * Drop LanguageSelector/CheckLanguageSupport.py,
    dbus_backend/ls-dbus-backend: Not used by anything any more, obsoleted by
    language_support_pkgs.py.
  * LanguageSelector/LanguageSelector.py: Reimplement getMissingLangPacks()
    using language_support_pkgs.py. This gets rid of a lot of redundant and
    bad code.
  * Change code to use the LanguageSelector.LangCache namespace more
    explicitly, to make it easier to get rid of LangCache.
  * LanguageSelector/LangCache.py: Remove yet another copy of the pkg_depends
    evaluation logic, and some more dead code, rewrite using
    language_support_pkgs.
  * Drop tests.moved/. Unused, no automatic tests, not very useful.
  * LanguageSelector/LangCache.py, LanguageSelector/qt/QtLanguageSelector.py:
    Drop last remainders of the languageSupport* info, language-support-* were
    dropped several cycles ago.

  [ Gunnar Hjalmarsson ]
  * Make the LANG variable, which up to now has represented regional
    formats, denote the display language instead (LP: #877610).
  * Make use of accountsservice's FormatsLocale property and
    SetFormatsLocale method when selecting a user's regional formats.
    (LP: #866062)
  * When setting the system-wide language, ensure that the system
    regional formats locale is set in order to prevent surprise
    changes of the formats.
  * data/LanguageSelector.ui: Text about rebooting no longer
    applicable, so removed.
  * LanguageSelector/LocaleInfo.py: Encode @variant string in the
    translate() function as UTF-8 to avoid a UnicodeDecodeError if a
    locale with @variant is selected for regional formats.
  * debian/control: Bump accountsservice dependency to >= 0.6.15-2ubuntu3,
    to ensure that we have the new SetFormatsLocale method.
  * debian/control: Make im-switch a dependency of language-selector-gnome,
    since it's no longer a dependency of ibus (LP: #908762).
 -- Martin Pitt <email address hidden> Fri, 03 Feb 2012 07:01:24 +0100