Package: tex-common
Version: 6.17
Severity: normal
X-Debbugs-Cc: stu...@debian.org
Dear Maintainer,
The postinst for tex-common is sensitive to the locale settings from the
environment and so can fail in strange ways. Users can end up with odd
locale settings in a chroot (as I did, where my login environment had
leaked into the chroot but the specified locale was not installed), when
connecting over ssh (the remote system's locale settings are applied to
the remote session), or through simple misconfiguration.
While the particularly odd locale seettings that I had in the chroot were
my fault, the postinst should be robust to such failures.
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Setting up tex-common (6.17) ...
debconf: falling back to frontend: Readline
Running mktexlsr. This may take some time... done.
Running updmap-sys. This may take some time... done.
Running mktexlsr /var/lib/texmf ... done.
Building format(s) --all.
This may take some time...
fmtutil failed. Output has been stored in
/tmp/fmtutil.YvPIYmjZ
Please include this file if you report a bug.
dpkg: error processing package tex-common (--configure):
installed tex-common package post-installation script subprocess returned
error exit status 1
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The log file mentioned ends with the following lines:
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fmtutil [ERROR]: running `luahbtex -ini -jobname=luahbtex -progname=luahbtex
luatex.ini </dev/null' return status: 1
fmtutil [ERROR]: returning error due to option --strict
fmtutil [ERROR]: running `luatex -ini -jobname=luatex -progname=luatex
luatex.ini </dev/null' return status: 1
fmtutil [ERROR]: returning error due to option --strict
fmtutil [ERROR]: running `luatex -ini -jobname=dvilualatex-dev
-progname=dvilualatex-dev dvilualatex.ini </dev/null' return status: 1
fmtutil [ERROR]: returning error due to option --strict
fmtutil [ERROR]: running `luatex -ini -jobname=dviluatex -progname=dviluatex
dviluatex.ini </dev/null' return status: 1
fmtutil [ERROR]: returning error due to option --strict
fmtutil [ERROR]: running `luatex -ini -jobname=dvilualatex
-progname=dvilualatex dvilualatex.ini </dev/null' return status: 1
fmtutil [ERROR]: returning error due to option --strict
fmtutil [ERROR]: running `luahbtex -ini -jobname=lualatex-dev
-progname=lualatex-dev lualatex.ini </dev/null' return status: 1
fmtutil [ERROR]: returning error due to option --strict
fmtutil [ERROR]: running `luahbtex -ini -jobname=lualatex -progname=lualatex
lualatex.ini </dev/null' return status: 1
fmtutil [ERROR]: returning error due to option --strict
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Running the offending command on its own gave:
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$ luahbtex -ini -jobname=luahbtex -progname=luahbtex luatex.ini </dev/null
Unable to read environment locale: exit now.
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Feeding in some environment variables to see if I could convince it to
behave:
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$ LANG=C LANGUAGE=C LC_CTYPE=C LC_NUMERIC=C LC_TIME=C LC_COLLATE=C
LC_MONETARY=C LC_MESSAGES=C LC_PAPER=C LC_NAME=C LC_ADDRESS=C luahbtex -ini
-jobname=luahbtex -progname=luahbtex luatex.ini </dev/null
bash: warning: setlocale: LC_COLLATE: cannot change locale (en_AU.UTF-8)
bash: warning: setlocale: LC_CTYPE: cannot change locale (en_AU.UTF-8)
bash: warning: setlocale: LC_MESSAGES: cannot change locale (en_AU.UTF-8)
bash: warning: setlocale: LC_NUMERIC: cannot change locale (en_AU.UTF-8)
bash: warning: setlocale: LC_TIME: cannot change locale (en_GB.UTF-8)
This is LuaHBTeX, Version 1.15.0 (TeX Live 2022/Debian) (INITEX)
restricted system commands enabled.
(/usr/share/texlive/texmf-dist/tex/generic/tex-ini-files/luatex.ini
[... snip lots of output before exiting successfully ...]
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(I can't explain why it's still looking for en_AU there when I have
asked for the C locale, but at least it exited cleanly)
Installing the 'locales' package and correctly configuring it to the
locales that were in the environment was also enough.
>From a Debian perspective, tex-common depending on the locales package is
not a nice thing to do; it's also not sufficient to solve this bug, since
installing the locales package is not the same as configuring the
particular locale required. Adding some locale overrides to the postinst
would be better, but it might mean that users do not get error messages
displayed to them in their preferred language.
regards
Stuart
