Comment 2 for bug 181891

Launchpad ate my comment I was typing. When it's allowed to click on "Also affects + .." while I'm editing a new comment, it's a severe bug (in launchpad) to send the comment to a blackhole and not giving it back to me.

Back on topic, again: I reproducibly tracked this down and now can say for sure the bug is either in APT or in libc6/strcmp() (or both). I am investigating APT's sources to fix it (most likely missing setlocale('C') before version comparison). In the meantime, s/o responsible should URGENTLY read and considering my first comment, to fix root's locale to 'C' deep inside where noone can unset it. This workaround will temporarily fix _many_ other bugs affecting computer systems consistency, stability, etc. IMHO, once you (Ubuntu folk) decide to disable the root account -- which is the right way to go -- you are responsible for the consequences. Now what we have is a single user-visible entry point with 'sudo', and another (maybe few) in the system libraries, I'm not familiar with the latter. Fix it there, please. Root's locale _must_ be kept 'C' for a while. Wait for l10n to stabilize, then this can be reverted.