Update to qubes-core-vm-3.2.17-1 in custom template generates missing character map messages

[mvermaes]

Qubes OS version (e.g., R3.2):

R3.2

Affected TemplateVMs (e.g., fedora-23, if applicable):

Custom, but very close to stock fedora-24-minimal

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Expected behavior:

dnf update in TemplateVM produces no unknown messages

Actual behavior:

Received the following output during the upgrade:

Running transaction
...
  Upgrading   : qubes-core-vm-3.2.17-1.fc24.x86_64                         5/18 
character map file `UTF-8' not found: No such file or directory
default character map file `ANSI_X3.4-1968' not found: No such file or directory
  Upgrading   : qubes-core-vm-systemd-3.2.17-1.fc24.x86_64                 6/18 

Steps to reproduce the behavior:

• Create new clone based on fedora-24-minimal
• Enter these commands (based on discussion in #2435 to set locale correctly)

sudo dnf -y install glibc-langpack-en
localectl set-locale LANG=en_AU.UTF-8
sudo dnf -y remove glibc-langpack-zu

• Run dnf update

General notes:

The messages seem to be generated by this code from the postinstall script, which are skipped in the stock fedora-24-minimal case due to having LANG=C in locale.conf:

https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-core-agent-linux/blob/d8e568fa134e922472db1c4bc470fe76e41ad946/rpm_spec/core-vm.spec#L311-L317

---

Related issues:

#2435

[mvermaes]

I saw a similar issue when updating from qubes-core-vm-3.2.18-1.fc25.x86_64 to 3.2.20-1.fc25.x86_64 today. This is using the default Fedora 25 template now, rather than Fedora 24 minimal, but otherwise the same scenario.

I looked a bit closer at how this is handled, and the Qubes code is searching the output of locale -a which contains en_AU.utf8, but not en_AU.UTF-8, which I think causes the error message to be generated. I'm not sure if this is a bug in that code, or if the charset should always be specified as utf8 instead of UTF-8.

[mvermaes]

I saw a similar issue when updating from qubes-core-vm-3.2.18-1.fc25.x86_64 to 3.2.20-1.fc25.x86_64 today. This is using the default Fedora 25 template now, rather than Fedora 24 minimal, but otherwise the same scenario.

I looked a bit closer at how this is handled, and the Qubes code is searching the output of locale -a which contains en_AU.utf8, but not en_AU.UTF-8, which I think causes the error message to be generated. I'm not sure if this is a bug in that code, or if the charset should always be specified as utf8 instead of UTF-8.