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There should be LC_ALL=C and maybe unset LANG and others variables too. With locale (for example) FTP service not work inside Midnight Commander and other tools due localized messages in output from the FTP daemon (this output can't be correctly parsed and some programs hagns due this reason). This is the fastest (but maybe not best) correction of this bug. The wu.ftpd daemon should be probably fixed too (internal ls command).
I frogot - LC_ALL=C should go into the /etc/init.d/xinetd.
I don't think this is a bug.. The world is more than English.
Yes. But every frontend (like Midnight commander, Netscape, CuteFTP, WSftp, ...) expect *English* reply. The system with localized FTP daemon is completly unusable. I mean this is bad when daemon like FTP speaking Czech or German because nobody will underestand what this daemon tell to them (connecting people may be from any country on the world not only from my country). English is (in this case) the only one acceptable language. You may fix FTP daemon (or xinetd) to not accept locale but there are other daemons so unsetting locale environment variables for xinetd in its starting script is the safest (and fastest for now) way to keep all possible boxes speaking correctly to connecting clients. Me and users in my country are happy to see output from 'ls' command in our language BUT we will never be happy when all clients (the users may use to connet to this Linux box) will not work due to stupid localized configuration in the wrong and unneded place. Believe me, I'm working on our national distribution for long long time and I know about what I'm speaking. Localization and corrections of "mistakes" made by english-speaking-programmers are endless and at this time this is the only one real and biggest trouble we have with Linux when we are trying to use it. I underestand that who is speaking english don't underestand to ours national troubles as I can't underestand to japanese troubles. But what we need is the usable international system without repeating manual fixing of hundreds bugs every time new distro is out. Any more questions? :-)
In the case of ftp messages from the server, wouldn't looking at the return codes be better? Depending on server-specific text sounds broken... Anyway, I'm changing it because I think i18n should be on the client, not the server - the server in general doesn't know which locale it should respond in. The changes should be made in 2.1.8.9pre13-1, which will show up in Rawhide at some point.