[Bug 920749] Re: pam configuration for SSH prevents LANG override

[Colin Watson]

Just commenting it out would also be wrong - there's extensive
discussion in the upstream bug I linked.

** Bug watch added: OpenSSH Portable Bugzilla #1346
   https://bugzilla.mindrot.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1346

** Also affects: openssh via
   https://bugzilla.mindrot.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1346
   Importance: Unknown
       Status: Unknown

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
Foundations Bugs, which is subscribed to openssh in Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/920749

Title:
  pam configuration for SSH prevents LANG override

Status in Portable OpenSSH:
  Unknown
Status in “openssh” package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  The default /etc/pam.d/sshd configuration has:

  # Read environment variables from /etc/environment and
  # /etc/security/pam_env.conf.
  #auth       required     pam_env.so # [1]
  # In Debian 4.0 (etch), locale-related environment variables were moved to
  # /etc/default/locale, so read that as well.
  auth       required     pam_env.so envfile=/etc/default/locale

  The default SSH client configuration has "Send LC_*" and the default
  SSH server configuration has "Accept LC_*". The PAM configuration
  prevents any user-overrides for locale settings.

  For example, if /etc/default/locale has:
  LANG=en_US.UTF-8
  LC_COLLATE=C

  Then running "LANG=zh_SG.utf8 LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8 ssh myspecialhost.foo.bar.com" yields:
  ubuntu at ip-10-12-15-243:~$ locale
  LANG=en_US.UTF-8
  LC_COLLATE=C
  (output truncated for clarity)

  While having a blank /etc/default/locale yeilds:
  ubuntu at ip-10-12-15-243:~$ locale
  locale: Cannot set LC_ALL to default locale: No such file or directory
  LANG=zh_SG.utf8
  LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8
  (output truncated for clarity)

  I think, although I am not sure, that this is a bug with the default
  configuration. It means that in order for server to accept multple
  languages or LC_* bindings, the system locale default would have to be
  unset. Effectively this is forcing the system default on all users.

To manage notifications about this bug go to:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/openssh/+bug/920749/+subscriptions