Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 209651
startkde fails to start - testing for /tmp free space is wrong when non-English locale is used
Last modified: 2009-05-18 16:22:24 EDT
Reproducible: 100% To reproduce: With LANG=ru_RU.UTF-8 and /tmp completely empty, run startkde. Expected: KDE starts Actual: Prints "Not enough free disk space on /tmp" and quits. The problem is that the /usr/bin/startkde script (as of kdebase-3.3.1-5.13) has the following line space_tmp=`df /tmp | xargs | cut -d" " -f11` The -f11 part would only work correctly if the field names in the df output have the expected numnber of spaces in them. However, the Russian translation of df's messages has "Fylesystem" translated as "Файловая система", adding an extra space. This results in space_tmp getting the number of _used_ blocks instead of the number of _free_ blocks it was supposed to get. Hence, if the filesystem is completely free, it mistakenly thinks it's completely full!
This request was evaluated by Red Hat Product Management for inclusion in a Red Hat Enterprise Linux maintenance release. Product Management has requested further review of this request by Red Hat Engineering, for potential inclusion in a Red Hat Enterprise Linux Update release for currently deployed products. This request is not yet committed for inclusion in an Update release.
Release note added. If any revisions are required, please set the "requires_release_notes" flag to "?" and edit the "Release Notes" field accordingly. All revisions will be proofread by the Engineering Content Services team. New Contents: * when KDE starts, it uses df to verify that there is enough free disk space available for it in the /tmp directory. However, the method that KDE used to parse the output from df assumed that the output would be in a language like English where the word df uses for "filesystem" is one word. In languages (like Russian, for example) where the word used by df for "filesystem" is not one word, kde parsed the output from df incorrectly, and would read the number of free blocks as the number of used blocks. Therefore, if /tmp was empty, KDE would read it as full and fail to start, printing the error message "Not enough free disk space on /tmp". KDE now uses the LANG=C locale when it runs df and therefore parses the output correctly.
An advisory has been issued which should help the problem described in this bug report. This report is therefore being closed with a resolution of ERRATA. For more information on therefore solution and/or where to find the updated files, please follow the link below. You may reopen this bug report if the solution does not work for you. http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2009-0992.html