Languages list empty at login screen, even though language-support-ar is installed

[Jasmine Hassan]

Binary package hint: gdm

After dist-upgrade from Jaunty 9.04 to Karmic 9.10 (via update-manager), gdm no longer displays a language list at the login screen (after clicking my username) via clicking the "Languages" drop-down list -> "Other"... It's just BLANK... However, the input languages list is displayed just fine...

I have installed language-support-ar previously, which in turn installed language-pack-ar and language-pack-ar-base. Also, language-pack-en and language-pack-en-base are installed... So what gives?

$ cat /var/lib/locales/supported.d/local
en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8
ar_EG.UTF-8 UTF-8
$ cat /var/lib/locales/supported.d/en
en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8
$ cat /var/lib/locales/supported.d/ar
ar_EG.UTF-8 UTF-8

# locale-gen
Generating locales...
  ar_EG.UTF-8... up-to-date
  en_US.UTF-8... up-to-date
Generation complete.

# apt-cache policy gdm
gdm:
  Installed: 2.27.90-0ubuntu4
  Candidate: 2.27.90-0ubuntu4
  Version table:
 *** 2.27.90-0ubuntu4 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com karmic/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

As a temporary workaround (and for testing), I edited my ~/.dmrc file and changed it's contents from:

~$ cat .dmrc

[Desktop]
Session=LXDE
Language=en_US.UTF-8
Layout=us

to:

[Desktop]
Session=LXDE
Language=ar_EG.UTF-8
Layout=us

and reloaded gdm via /etc/init.d/gdm

GDM then displays Arabic (Egypt) in the languages list upon login... and after reboot, English (US) and Arabic (Egypt) are still displayed when I click on my username because they're now cached as recently used languages..

So why isn't gdm detecting the currently installed language by itself?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug report, not confirming the issue there though

[Jasmine Hassan (jasmine-aura)]

Thanks Sebastian.
Do you think this is in any way related to bug 314171 (Can't select Asturian language in gdm)?
Should I send this bug report upstream as well?

[Jasmine Hassan (jasmine-aura)]

Sent it upstream anyway :) https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=595420

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for sending the bug to GNOME

[andoreasu (andoreasu)]

I have the same problem since I updated two different machines to 9.10, can confirm the issue on only one of them, the other is fine.

[Jasmine Hassan (jasmine-aura)]

I believe the issues has been resolved in recent gdm version from `aptitude update; aptitude safe-upgrade`

I will check that system later to confirm, and provide the version of gdm in which this behavior seems to be "fixed".

[andoreasu (andoreasu)]

It is not fixed for me not even in 2.28.0-0ubuntu15
I dont have any idea why this happens only on one of system.

[andoreasu (andoreasu)]

A workaround that lets you select your preferred languages by manipulating the list of recently selected language (note that the complete list in "other languages" is still empty)

sudo gedit /var/lib/gdm/.gconf/apps/gdm/simple-greeter/%gconf.xml

you will see something like this:

 <entry name="recent-languages" mtime="1255452885" type="list" ltype="string">
  <li type="string">
   <stringvalue>de_DE.UTF-8</stringvalue>
  </li>
 </entry>

just add another list item:

 <entry name="recent-languages" mtime="1255452885" type="list" ltype="string">
  <li type="string">
   <stringvalue>de_DE.UTF-8</stringvalue>
  </li>
  <li type="string">
   <stringvalue>ja_JP.UTF-8</stringvalue>
  </li>
 </entry>

[andoreasu (andoreasu)]

Updating to lucid alpha still does not resolve the issue.