upgrading mailman changed DEFAULT_SERVER_LANGUAGE from "en" to "zh_TW"

[Junien F]

Hi,

I just upgraded mailman:amd64 from 2.1.20-1ubuntu0.1 to 2.1.20-1ubuntu0.3, and in /etc/mailman/mm_cfg.py, the following happened :

-DEFAULT_SERVER_LANGUAGE = 'en'
+DEFAULT_SERVER_LANGUAGE = 'zh_TW'

Can the upgrade please not change the default language ?

Thanks

$ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS
Release: 16.04

[Christian Ehrhardt  (paelzer)]

/etc/mailman/mm_cfg.py is currently not considered a conffile of mailman.
That is the reason it is overwritten on an update instead of getting the usual "you had differences do you want the maintainers content, Y/N/show diff".

But currently:
# cat /var/lib/dpkg/info/mailman.conffiles
/etc/cron.d/mailman
/etc/init.d/mailman
/etc/logrotate.d/mailman
/etc/mailman/apache.conf

OTOH this doesn't seem a normal file - there is some special handling for language.
This is doen via debconf - so when you first installed you were asked what the default should be and this is generated into this file.

 92 if [ -e /etc/mailman/mm_cfg.py ]; then
 93 db_get mailman/default_server_language || true
 94 if [ -n "$RET" ]; then
 95 default_server_language="$(echo $RET | sed -r 's/ \([^\)]*\)//g')"
 96 sed -e s/DEFAULT_SERVER_LANGUAGE.*=.*\'..\'/DEFAULT_SERVER_LANGUAGE\ =\ \'${default_server_language}\'
 97 mv -f ${mm_etc}/mm_cfg.py.$$ ${mm_etc}/mm_cfg.py
 98 fi
 99 fi

That code seems odd to me, but I'm not a debconf expert anyway.
SO in general this file seems to be handled "special" in the postinst.

I see it will
1. do the check above to set language from debconf
2. place the file if it does not exist (cp from /usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/mm_cfg.py.dist)
   IMHO that should be before above check
3. if mm_defaults is still in the file configure it

While I think #2 and #1 would need some fixes (separate issue IMHO) I wonder where your problem might come from.
Maybe just that you need to set the debconf.
What does:
$ debconf-show mailman
show you for mailman/site_languages?

If it is not zh_TW you might set it with:
$ echo "set mailman/default_server_language zh_TW" | debconf-communicate
After that does an install still clobber it for you?

[Junien F (axino)]

Sure enough, I have mailman/default_server_language: zh_TW

Fixed with :
$ echo "set mailman/default_server_language en" | sudo debconf-communicate

Thanks !