/etc/papersize contains "a4" rather than "letter" in Edgy

[Christopher Barrington-Leigh]

Binary package hint: libpaper1

I have the latest Edgy, installed fresh.
Various ps/pdf tools/apps fail due to the default papersize not being set in accordance with my local (Canada).
I have the latest libpaper1 already installed.
Yet /etc/papersize contains the characters "a4" rather than "letter", as it should.

The fix for me is to edit that file.

Correct behaviour would be for the system to set the default papersize in accordance with the locale.

[Christopher Barrington-Leigh (cpbl)]

I have installed the latest Feisty as a fresh install, and this bug is unaddressed. The default paper is still a4, despite my locale.

[SPopejoy (stuart-pinksheets)]

I experienced the exact same problem. A recent fresh install of Edgy Eft Kubuntu resulted in days of frustration trying to use the Print Manager, CUPS (localhost:631), foomatic-gui, and anything else I could think of to get printing to Letter.

Finally I happened across a google to check /etc/papersize and lo and behold, it was set to A4.

Note, however, that while this is related to libpaper1, /etc/papersize is not included in it according to dpkg -L:

$ sudo dpkg -L libpaper1
/.
/etc
/etc/libpaper.d
/usr
/usr/lib
/usr/lib/libpaper.so.1.1.2
/usr/share
/usr/share/man
/usr/share/man/man5
/usr/share/man/man5/papersize.5.gz
/usr/share/doc
/usr/share/doc/libpaper1
/usr/share/doc/libpaper1/copyright
/usr/share/doc/libpaper1/changelog.gz
/usr/share/doc/libpaper1/NEWS.Debian.gz
/usr/lib/libpaper.so.1

Therefore I am concluding that the installer must dump this file in there. I will file a new bug accordingly and link to this.

Stuart

[SPopejoy (stuart-pinksheets)]

I cannot seem to find anywhere to report a bug on the installer itself. Again, I am unable to determine any package as the source for /etc/papersize. This could be considered a bug in itself:

$ sudo dpkg -S /etc/papersize
dpkg: /etc/papersize not found.

Someone did report this for a beta build. Again I don't want to create a new bug if possible:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/104160

Stuart

[SPopejoy (stuart-pinksheets)]

OK, created bug in base-installer:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/base-installer/+bug/107536

Stuart

[Matthew Koyle (mgkoyle)]

this bug duplicates #46613: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libpaper/+bug/46613

[Douglas Moyes (aragorn-stellimare)]

This is only half of the problem, You also have other files to set (as I stated in #46613)

Here is what you do to fix. As root do the following:
(yes, this has to be done in a root shell not with sudo. If sudo su - doesn't give you a root shell, do sudo /bin/bash --login, better yet, give the root account a password and log in as root)

apt-get install libpaper-utils #some programs use this library to get the paper size
papersize -p letter #this sets /etc/papersize to letter, you could also set this manually.
echo "letter" >/etc/psPaperSize #some other applications use this

Other applications instead allow you to select the default papersize, or use the printer settings, others use these two files. The files in /etc set the preferred paper size. If these aren't set some printers, like my HP Color LaserJet 2605n, will complain about the incorrect paper size being in the print tray, and will refuse to print until you insert in A4 paper size, or override the settings.

[Matthew Koyle (mgkoyle)]

Gutsy appears to have fixed all of these problems, or at least all of the global settings. Did they do this by making the system choose based on locale or did they just change the default to letter?

For me it's fixed, so perhaps this gets to be closed soon.

--Matthew

[Pascal De Vuyst (pascal-devuyst)]

This problem is solved in Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy), the Ubuntu Desktop CD installer ubiquity now sets /etc/papersize to match the selected locale instead of defaulting to A4.
Closing as a duplicate of bug #104160.