growpart doesn't work when LANG=cs_CZ.UTF-8

[xiaoyi chen]

Using growpart with locale cs_CZ on RHEL7/RHEL8 encounters the following error,
  # growpart /dev/xvda 2 -v -N
    unexpected output in sfdisk --version [sfdisk z util-linux 2.23.2]

I found that,
when LANG=cs_CZ.UTF-8, run command "sfdisk --version" would get "sfdisk z util-linux 2.32.1".
It is weird that the char between z and util-linux is not a space char but a char of UTF-8 code 302.

$ set -- sfdisk z util-linux 2.32.1
$ echo $2
z util-linux

$ echo $2 |od -b
0000000 172 302 240 165 164 151 154 055 154 151 156 165 170 012
0000016

$ echo $3
2.32.1

$ echo $4

so the growpart command failed because the $4 is unset in this case.

        # expected output: sfdisk from util-linux 2.25.2
        out=$(sfdisk --version) ||
                { error "failed to get sfdisk version"; return 1; }
        set -- $out
        ver=$4
        case "$ver" in
                [0-9]*.[0-9]*.[0-9]|[0-9].[0-9]*)
                        IFS="."; set -- $ver; IFS="$oifs"
                        SFDISK_VERSION=$(($1*10000+$2*100+${3:-0}))
                        return 0;;
                *) error "unexpected output in sfdisk --version [$out]"
                        return 1;;
        esac

[Solution]
one simple fix for growpart could be adding LANG=C before the command sfdisk --version, e.g.
        out=$(LANG=C sfdisk --version) ||

[xiaoyi chen (xiachen-rh)]

Hi Project Owner,
I sent a pull request https://github.com/canonical/cloud-utils/pull/30,
could anyone help to review please?

thanks,
Amy

[Paride Legovini (paride)]

Hello Amy and thanks for this bug report. Octal "302 240" is hex "C2 A0" which is a non-breaking space [1]. I guess it was used for cosmetic reasons, to avoid a newline right after the "z".

I'll review your PR on GitHub.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-breaking_space

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package cloud-utils - 0.32-22-g45fe84a5-0ubuntu1

---------------
cloud-utils (0.32-22-g45fe84a5-0ubuntu1) impish; urgency=medium

  * New upstream snapshot.
    - Merge test changes from test-growpart to test-growpart-lvm
      [Dan Bungert] (LP: #1929885)
    - Fix issue LP: #1928167 growpart doesn't work when LANG=cs_CZ.UTF-8
      [Amy Chen]
    - growpart: change flock call to use short option for Busybox
      compatibility [Dermot Bradley]
    - growpart: Use LANG=C to parse sfdisk output [Nicolas Chauvet]
      (LP: #1860479)

 -- Paride Legovini <email address hidden> Thu, 05 Aug 2021 11:58:37 +0200