[Bug 1134036] Re: Failure when using ssh with a locale that is not configured on the server

[Łukasz Zemczak]

I'm not a big fan of this approach but I certainly don't have any better
idea myself. At least the new executable should be relatively fast.
Anyway, let's 'just do it' in this case. I guess the additional libc dep
is a no-op.

** Changed in: base-files (Ubuntu Bionic)
       Status: New => Fix Committed

** Tags added: verification-needed verification-needed-bionic

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1134036

Title:
  Failure when using ssh with a locale that is not configured on the
  server

Status in base-files package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released
Status in maas package in Ubuntu:
  Invalid
Status in base-files source package in Bionic:
  Fix Committed
Status in maas source package in Bionic:
  New

Bug description:
  [impact]
  The setup:

  1) The user has LC_ALL set to a locale on their machine (or some other LC_* variable but it's usually LC_ALL).
  2) This locale does not exist on an Ubuntu server.
  3) The user sshes into the server.

  ssh (at least with the settings that are default on Debian and Ubuntu
  and Fedora) send the value of LC_ALL to the remote server, where the
  default settings on Ubuntu allow this to be set in the environment of
  the process it launches.

  Because we are now in a situation where LC_ALL is set to a value that
  is not valid for the system, various undesirable things happen,
  including ugly messages from cloud-init and perl complaining every
  time a perl process starts and the bug that the original description
  below describes.

  [test case]
  Configure the setup as described above. Ssh into the server and run "perl < /dev/null" and check for warnings.

  [regression potential]
  This adds a step to the startup of every login shell, which obviously is not entirely trivial. However, the new executable being invoked is very simple and even if it fails, the startup of the shell should not be inhibited.

  
  [original description]

  
  If LC_ALL is not set (which seems to be the default on a few server installations I've done now), mid way through installing, you get this backtrace and then the installation just hangs.  You can ctrl-c out of it but the package is left half configured.

  Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "/usr/bin/django-admin", line 5, in <module>
      management.execute_from_command_line()
    File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 443, in execute_from_command_line
      utility.execute()
    File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 382, in execute
      self.fetch_command(subcommand).run_from_argv(self.argv)
    File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/core/management/base.py", line 196, in run_from_argv
      self.execute(*args, **options.__dict__)
    File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/core/management/base.py", line 232, in execute
      output = self.handle(*args, **options)
    File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/core/management/base.py", line 371, in handle
      return self.handle_noargs(**options)
    File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/south/management/commands/syncdb.py", line 90, in handle_noargs
      syncdb.Command().execute(**options)
    File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/core/management/base.py", line 232, in execute
      output = self.handle(*args, **options)
    File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/core/management/base.py", line 371, in handle
      return self.handle_noargs(**options)
    File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/core/management/commands/syncdb.py", line 57, in handle_noargs
      cursor = connection.cursor()
    File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/db/backends/__init__.py", line 308, in cursor
      cursor = util.CursorWrapper(self._cursor(), self)
    File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/db/backends/postgresql_psycopg2/base.py", line 177, in _cursor
      self.connection = Database.connect(**conn_params)
    File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/psycopg2/__init__.py", line 179, in connect
      connection_factory=connection_factory, async=async)
  psycopg2.OperationalError: FATAL:  password authentication failed for user "maas"
  FATAL:  password authentication failed for user "maas"

  Related bugs:
   * bug 969462: [postgres] fails to start after install if invalid locale is set

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