[Bug 2030788] Re: "localectl set-x11-keymap" doesn't work in mantic

[Chad Smith]

Nick, thanks for the comment. I had a conspiracy theory that there was a race condition here in early boot during cloud-config.service when cloud-init tried writing /etc/default/keyboard directly to write out before invoking systemctl restart console-setup.  The conditions I was seeing was the error message:
    Could not get properties: Access Denied

This generic message which lead me to believe something was interacting
incorrectly with dbus during systemd-localed activation.

Turns, out this was a programming issue in the cloud-init PR we put up
to address this. When cloud-init is trying to write
/etc/default/keyboard, the content is correct, but the file permissions
were off.

The utility function we were using was trying to set perms on
/etc/default/keyboard to 644 providing a decimal value of 644 instead of
an octal value of mode=0o644

```
        util.write_file(
            filename="/etc/default/keyboard",
            content=contents,
            mode=644,
            omode="w",
        )
```

This resulted in setting permissions 1204 on /etc/default/keyboard ....
which is equivalent of:

 chmod u=w,o=,g=r,+t /etc/default/keyboard.


leaving us with a file with no read permissions for root and a sticky bit set:

root at testlocale-manticdaily:~# ls -l /etc/default/keyboard 
-rw-r----T 1 root root 120 Aug 25 02:31 /etc/default/keyboard


This results in a strange state and error message where first call to "localectl status" will first report as systemd-localed.service is activated, and the 2nd call to "localectl status" uses the cached values of the currently active systemd-localed.service so it doesn't report the permissions error and just dumps empty unset values.

root at testlocale-manticdaily:~# localectl status
Could not get properties: Access denied
root at testlocale-manticdaily:~# localectl status
System Locale: LANG=C.UTF-8
    VC Keymap: (unset)     
   X11 Layout: (unset)     


I think there are two issues here with localectl in Mantic, neither of
which really seem critical from a functional standpoint, but from a
usability standpoint they may warrant bugs of effort to improve
understanding best practices and/or discovering errors in keymap
setting:

  1. localectl set-x11-keymap <keymap_layout> <model>  could provide a pointer to manpage, breadcrumb or suggested best practice for writing /etc/default/keyboard directly instead of an unhelpful message:
   Setting X11 and console keymaps is not supported in Debian.

  2. localectl status could be more informative about permissions errors or formatting errors in /etc/default/keyboard and  could probably announce what type of permissions errors it is hitting:
   Could not get properties: Access denied to file /etc/default/keyboard

Again the 2nd case is really user/program-failure to do the right thing
so not as likely a candidate to address.

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
Foundations Bugs, which is subscribed to systemd in Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/2030788

Title:
  "localectl set-x11-keymap" doesn't work in mantic

Status in cloud-init package in Ubuntu:
  In Progress
Status in systemd package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  On the raspi arm64 server image, I used to use cloud-init's keyboard
  module to set my keyboard to GB by default. However, on mantic
  localectl (which the keyboard module uses) is now reporting:

    $ localectl set-x11-keymap gb pc105
    Setting X11 and console keymaps is not supported in Debian

  So ... how do I get my £ key by default now? Or should this be filed
  against systemd as well?

To manage notifications about this bug go to:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cloud-init/+bug/2030788/+subscriptions