romanian language weird installation

[André Pirard]

Ubuntu 8.10.1 with English, French, Russian and Spanish.
Adding Romanian with 'Language Support', I get the message
> Could not install the full language support
> Usually this is related to an error in your software archive or software manager.
> Check your software preferences in the menu "Adminstration".
Could not find a preference to change.
Usually, this is due to too little hint and/or too many preferences.

Got the idea to try installing Walloon (local dialect and small).
Oh, it's got a - check mark (didn't find a documented explanation).
Turned the mark to V, click Apply, runs with no message.

Set the V mark to Romanian, Apply, runs with no message either.
Exit, clicking OK.

Back to 'Language Support', it tells me:
> The language support is not installed completely
> Some translations or writing aids available for your chosen languages are not installed yet.
> Do you want to install them now?
> Details: language-support-translations-ro
I say OK to continue, after flipping Walloon from - to V again.
I get the message.
> Could not apply changes!
> Fix broken packages first.
Conclusions...
Walloon V mark flips back to - every time 'Language Support' restarts.
Needs to be set to V to enable installing another language.
Basic Romanian was installed but it seems the full package is broken.
That is,
Desktop etc is in Romanian but not Office, Firefox etc...
Firefox shows check mark - for Romanian Add-on.

[André Pirard (a.pirard)]

Followup ...
> The following packages have unresolvable dependencies.
> language-support-translations-ro:
> Depends: openoffice.org-l10n-ro but it is not going to be installed
So I tried to install it manually off the following page :

http://packages.ubuntu.com/fr/hardy/all/openoffice.org-l10n-ro/download

But it turned out that openoffice.org-l10n-ro is missing from several
servers, for example

http://ftp.belnet.be/pub/mirror/ubuntu.com/pool/main/o/openoffice.org-l10n/openoffice.org-l10n-ro_2.4.0-3ubuntu1_all.deb
http://mirror.clarkson.edu/pub/distributions/ubuntu/pool/main/o/openoffice.org-l10n/openoffice.org-l10n-ro_2.4.0-3ubuntu1_all.deb
http://www.opensourcemirrors.org/ubuntu/pool/main/o/openoffice.org-l10n/openoffice.org-l10n-ro_2.4.0-3ubuntu1_all.deb
http://ubuntu.mirrors.skynet.be/pub/ubuntu.com/pool/main/o/openoffice.org-l10n/openoffice.org-l10n-ro_2.4.0-3ubuntu1_all.deb

At that point, I tried in vain to change my Synaptic repositories to
Main and US.
And, BTW, I found no way to reset them to installation value
be.archive.ubuntu.com.

I finally found it at :
http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/main/o/openoffice.org-l10n/openoffice.org-l10n-ro_2.4.0-3ubuntu1_all.deb

But manual installation went : Error: Conflicts with the installed
package 'openoffice.org-core'
No details of which conflict that is, to help solving it.

I finally guess-solved my problem by installing
openoffice.org-l10n-ro_2.4.1 from the updates.
BTW, GDebi recommended to install 2.4.0 instead.

But :
- I still don't understand why openoffice.org-cor 1:2.4.1 slipped into
this system.
This system has updates carefully turned off because it supports other
installations without Internet access.

- openoffice.org-l10n-ro_2.4.0 shouldn't be missing from main servers
anyway.

- openoffice.org-l10n-ro_2.4.1 is missing from several servers too.

- this "half-success" story points out at several obscure aspects of
'Language support'.
With the information received, no general user would have overcome his
problem by himself.
While 'Language support' remained not only clueless but even misleading,
the true reasons appeared only after tackling the problem with Synaptic.

[papukaija (papukaija)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. We are sorry that we do not always have the capacity to look at all reported bugs in a timely manner.
There have been many changes in Ubuntu since that time you reported the bug and your problem may have been fixed with some of the updates. It would help us a lot if you could test the current Ubuntu development version (10.10). If you can test it, and it is still an issue, we would appreciate if you could upload updated logs by running apport-collect 290087, and any other logs that are relevant for this particular issue.

In addition Intrepid reached EOL on April 30 2010.
Please see this document for currently supported Ubuntu releases:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

Please either a) upgrade and test or b) increase the verbosity of the steps to recreate it so we can try again.

Please feel free to report any other bugs you may find. Thanks in advance!

[Lucian Adrian Grijincu (lucian.grijincu)]

Maverick seems to have all required packages ok, and I don't remember having any problems in recent releases (e.g. Lucid).

http://packages.ubuntu.com/ro/lucid/all/openoffice.org-l10n-ro/download
http://packages.ubuntu.com/ro/maverick/all/openoffice.org-l10n-ro/download

[André Pirard (a.pirard)]

What I saw was unbelievable and hard to understand.
I can neither explain more nor repeatthe problem.
Moreover, there might have been depot server problems on top.
The best you could do is erase this report entirely to avoid user confusion.