command-not-found crashing with incomplete locale settings

[Martin Mrazik]

I'm running the latest 12.04 and I'm getting the following:
---------------snip-------------
mmrazik@fry:~$ logo
Sorry, command-not-found has crashed! Please file a bug report at:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/command-not-found/+filebug
Please include the following information with the report:

command-not-found version: 0.2.44
mmrazik@fry:~$
---------------snip-------------

This is probably 2 bugs in 1:
1. the crash itself
2. the message which tells you absolutely nothing what is going on

After some debugging I realized there is something wrong with my locale setup (to be honest I don't know how I get into this state; I have a fresh install with my old home and it looks like even though I selected the en_US locale the previous CS bits stayed somewhere in home).

-------------------snip----------------
mmrazik@fry:~$ update-locale LANG=en_US.UTF-8
perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
 LANGUAGE = "en_US:en",
 LC_ALL = (unset),
 LC_PAPER = "cs_CZ.UTF-8",
 LC_ADDRESS = "cs_CZ.UTF-8",
 LC_MONETARY = "cs_CZ.UTF-8",
 LC_NUMERIC = "cs_CZ.UTF-8",
 LC_TELEPHONE = "cs_CZ.UTF-8",
 LC_MEASUREMENT = "cs_CZ.UTF-8",
 LC_TIME = "cs_CZ.UTF-8",
 LC_NAME = "cs_CZ.UTF-8",
 LANG = "en_US.UTF-8"
    are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
update-locale: Unable to write /etc/default/locale: Permission denied
mmrazik@fry:~$
-------------------snip----------------

I found out there is no cs dir in /usr/share/locale-langpack/. After:

mmrazik@fry:~$ sudo apt-get install language-pack-cs

I'm getting:
mmrazik@fry:~$ logo
The program 'logo' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing:
sudo apt-get install ucblogo
mmrazik@fry:~$

How to reproduce:
- set your locale to a language with no language pack installed
- run command-not-found
- observe the crash

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

command-not-found should have printed some more information as seen in the following:

            print >> sys.stderr, _("command-not-found version: %s") % version
            print >> sys.stderr, _("Python version: %d.%d.%d %s %d") % sys.version_info
            try:
                import subprocess
                subprocess.call(["lsb_release", "-i", "-d", "-r", "-c"], stdout=sys.stderr)
            except (ImportError, OSError):
                pass
            print >> sys.stderr, _("Exception information:")
            print >> sys.stderr
            print >> sys.stderr, ex
            try:
                import traceback
                traceback.print_exc()
            except ImportError:
                pass

Regardless I don't think command-not-found tell people goto to +filebug but rather launch ubuntu-bug for you or just let apport catch the crash. I'll open a separate bug for that.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

How did you perform the fresh install with your old home? I'm curious if this is a problem other people might encounter.

[Martin Mrazik (mrazik)]

/home is a separate partition so all I did was that I wiped my root filesystem "/".

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Right, but how did you install? Did you use the Live CD of Ubuntu 12.04 and choose to upgrade an old release of Ubuntu to 12.04 or perform a fresh install leaving your home directory alone?

[Martin Mrazik (mrazik)]

Sorry. Didn't understand your question.
I used LiveCD. I marked the partition with my old / to format and mount as '/' (so the old system was really completely wiped out byt the mkfs). In the same dialog I marked my home partition to mount as /home and _do not_ format.

[Martin Mrazik (mrazik)]

Actually.. I used the i386 liveCD of 11.10, installed 11.10 (but didn't install any 11.10 update from the internet) and only then upgraded to 12.04.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Scott Ritchie (scottritchie)]

You can also replicate this on a very-bare install that has no language packs at all.

[Daniel Kulesz (kuleszdl)]

I can confirm this bug as well, I observed it on three different systems running Ubuntu 12.04. I installed each of these systems using the alternative Installer, selecting English as the System Language, German Keyboard and en_US.UTF8 for the locale (which seems to be a fix to the bug I reported here back in 2008 already: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/debian-installer/+bug/229699).

[Daniel Kulesz (kuleszdl)]

Update: Actually I can confirm that on systems where the "setting locale failed" problem appears also command-not-found is broken and crashes as reported by Martin here. When you get rid of the "setting locale failed" problem, command-not-found does not crash anymore.

But nevertheless, even if the locale cannot be set correctly command-not-found should not crash but give a hint to the problem like i.e. "perl" does:

perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
        LANGUAGE = "en_US:en",
        LC_ALL = (unset),
        LC_PAPER = "a4",
        LANG = "en_US.UTF-8"
    are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").

[Jakob Unterwurzacher (jakobunt)]

I also got into this state, installing 12.04.1 from the desktop CD, selecting en_US language, german keyboard, german number and date format (de_DE).

[Po-Hsu Lin (cypressyew)]

Got this problem too, Ubuntu 12.04.1 with command-not-found 0.2.44

I found that if the chosen locale was not generated first (locale-gen), then it will cause this problem.