Bug 1755287

Summary:	localectl set-locale should issue an error message when trying to set a nonexistent locale
Product:	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8	Reporter:	Bernd Finger <bfinger>
Component:	systemd	Assignee:	David Tardon <dtardon>
Status:	CLOSED ERRATA	QA Contact:	Frantisek Sumsal <fsumsal>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	8.0	CC:	ashankar, codonell, dj, dtardon, fweimer, jamacku, mnewsome, msekleta, pfrankli, systemd-maint-list
Target Milestone:	rc
Target Release:	8.0
Hardware:	Unspecified
OS:	Unspecified
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:	systemd-239-43.el8	Doc Type:	If docs needed, set a value
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2021-05-18 14:53:17 UTC	Type:	Bug
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Bernd Finger 2019-09-25 08:25:08 UTC

Description of problem:
Running "localectl set-locale aaa" on RHEL 8 succeeds and does not issue an error or warning message.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
RHEL 8.0 GA

How reproducible:
always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Execute:
# localectl set-locale aaa
2. Run:
# echo $?

Actual results:
a) There is no warning or error message.
b) The return code is 0:
0

Expected results:
The behavior should be identical to RHEL 7.6:
a) There should be an error message like:
Failed to issue method call: Invalid Locale data.
b) The return code should be 1:
1

Additional info:

Comment 1 Florian Weimer 2019-09-25 08:35:46 UTC

localectl comes from systemd:

$ rpm -qf /usr/bin/localectl 
systemd-239-13.el8_0.5.x86_64

I think systemd should be able to check the availability of a locale using the setlocale function, so I don't think we need any glibc changes to enable this feature.

Comment 3 Jan Synacek 2019-10-31 11:53:41 UTC

(In reply to Bernd Finger from comment #0)
> Expected results:
> The behavior should be identical to RHEL 7.6:
> a) There should be an error message like:
> Failed to issue method call: Invalid Locale data.

Well, the RHEL-7.6 version does not check the input either. It just fails if you don't provide the variable that you want to set too.

# localectl set-locale foobar
Failed to issue method call: Invalid Locale data.

# localectl set-locale LANG=foobar
# echo $?
0

The upstream version (673d873a42fd6e7821e310cfb81bc37d092c4a22) doesn't sanity-check the input as well.

Comment 4 Jan Synacek 2019-11-06 13:20:09 UTC

https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/13964

Comment 8 Lukáš Nykrýn 2020-11-24 18:01:25 UTC

fix merged to github master branch -> https://github.com/systemd-rhel/rhel-8/pull/132

Comment 14 errata-xmlrpc 2021-05-18 14:53:17 UTC

Since the problem described in this bug report should be
resolved in a recent advisory, it has been closed with a
resolution of ERRATA.

For information on the advisory (Moderate: systemd security, bug fix, and enhancement update), and where to find the updated
files, follow the link below.

If the solution does not work for you, open a new bug report.

https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2021:1611