Comment 2 for bug 528908

I think upstart jobs don't have a particular environment, you need to source it yourself.

I believe you need to add something like

    if [ -r /etc/default/locale ]; then
        . /etc/default/locale
        export LANG LANGUAGE
    elif [ -r /etc/environment ]; then
        . /etc/environment
        export LANG LANGUAGE
    fi

to either /etc/init/failsafe-x.conf (before calling failsaveXServer) or /etc/gdm/failsafeXServer directly.

David, would you mind testing this?