Slackware 13.37 doesn't consider setting of LANG in /etc/profile.d/lang.sh after 'su'

Didier Spaier · 12-14-2013, 08:46 AM

I just installed Slackware 13.37 in a VM to test installing a new slint package.

At end of installation LANG is set to fr_FR.utf8 in /etc/profile.d/lang.sh:

Code:

export LANG=fr_FR.utf8

When I log in as a regular user or as root (either directly or through 'su -'), LANG is properly set. But if I login as a regular user and then get root's privileges with 'su', LANG is unset.

I just installed a fresh Slackware 14.1 as well and then in all cases LANG is set.

I don't understand why behavior is different with Slackware 13.37. Any clue appreciated.

Alien Bob · 12-14-2013, 11:13 AM

The "su" command does not source /etc/profile and therefore your LANG variable will not be set. That is why we always tell people to use "su -".

Eric

Didier Spaier · 12-14-2013, 12:29 PM

Yes Eric. But then, why does that work on Slackware64-14.1?

ljb643 · 12-14-2013, 01:42 PM

This should work, but was broken until Slackware-14.0. "su" (without the - option) should copy almost the entire environment into the new shell. It should copy LANG and therefore the locale will be right. This does not depend on /etc/profile or /etc/profile.d/*. It does work in Slackware 14.0 and 14.1.

Here is the entry from the Slackware-14.0 ChangeLog:

Quote:

a/shadow-4.1.4.3-i486-5.txz: Rebuilt.
Patched a bug where locale variables would be improperly sanitized from
the shell environment. Thanks to Serg Bormant.

It was fixed in August 2012.

Didier Spaier · 12-14-2013, 02:06 PM

I see, thanks. And thanks to Serg. I will write a little warning about that attn folks still wanting that their Slackware 13.37 become polyglot then.

ljb643 · 12-14-2013, 02:24 PM

Since Slackware-13.37 and 14.0 use the same version of the Shadow suite (4.1.4.3), it should be possible to patch the shadow package in 13.37 to fix this, if one wanted to. The patch is called r3090.diff.gz and can be found in the Slackware 14.0 source directory a/shadow/patches/.