Possibly missing locale handling

[mikemoate]

I will freely admit my knowledge of locale in Linux is limited, hopefully others are more knowledgeable :-S

Whilst investigating some locale issues on our Ubuntu servers (14.04) I noticed that the ssh_config and sshd_config created by this cookbook lack the settings for sending and accepting locale, which differs from the default ubuntu/debian behaviour.

Specifically, sshd_config on debian would have:

AcceptEnv LANG LC_*

and ssh_config on debian would have:

SendEnv LANG LC_*

Can we add these back in, should we? (it won't fix our problem, but seems like an oversight)

[artem-sidorenko]

@mikemoate thank you for raising this question,

from my POV we can add the accept_env and send_env attributes, however I'm not sure how the defaults should look like

[root@b59b2373a9c0 ~]# cat /etc/*release*
CentOS Linux release 7.2.1511 (Core) 
...
[root@b59b2373a9c0 ~]# grep Env /etc/ssh/ssh_config
	SendEnv LANG LC_CTYPE LC_NUMERIC LC_TIME LC_COLLATE LC_MONETARY LC_MESSAGES
	SendEnv LC_PAPER LC_NAME LC_ADDRESS LC_TELEPHONE LC_MEASUREMENT
	SendEnv LC_IDENTIFICATION LC_ALL LANGUAGE
	SendEnv XMODIFIERS
[root@b59b2373a9c0 ~]# grep Env /etc/ssh/sshd_config 
#PermitUserEnvironment no
AcceptEnv LANG LC_CTYPE LC_NUMERIC LC_TIME LC_COLLATE LC_MONETARY LC_MESSAGES
AcceptEnv LC_PAPER LC_NAME LC_ADDRESS LC_TELEPHONE LC_MEASUREMENT
AcceptEnv LC_IDENTIFICATION LC_ALL LANGUAGE
AcceptEnv XMODIFIERS

root@7adcc13493f1:~# cat /etc/*release*
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=16.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=xenial
...
root@7adcc13493f1:~# grep Env /etc/ssh/ssh_config
    SendEnv LANG LC_*
root@7adcc13493f1:~# grep Env /etc/ssh/sshd_config
AcceptEnv LANG LC_*

It looks like LANG LC_* LANGUAGE should be the proper default option here. What do you think?

@atomic111 @chris-rock opinions?

[mikemoate]

I agree with your suggestion, and am happy to work up a PR for that, but will wait for other experts to give their opinions.

[artem-sidorenko]

@mikemoate I think you can just start to work on the PR:) man locale is the best expert regarding this topic and LANG LC_* LANGUAGE sound totally reasonable for my 16 years of unix experience with different locale setups (english/german/russian)

[mikemoate]

@artem-sidorenko OK, I wasn't sure if you intended for me to wait for the other's you had mentioned in your comment to reply?

I'll try and get something together in the next few days. Any thoughts on testing this?

[artem-sidorenko]

@mikemoate

I wasn't sure if you intended for me to wait for the other's you had mentioned in your comment to reply?

I asked them if they have any opinion, if they would have anything to say here: we would already see a response (at least this is my experience) :)

I'll try and get something together in the next few days. Any thoughts on testing this?

I would just do unit tests, something like in GH-155

[chris-rock]

We could also set the values on ubuntu only, therefore we would not set the values if the attribute is nil

[artem-sidorenko]

@chris-rock there is a similar issue on RHEL/centos too. I think we should stick here with a default distro configuration, which is to accept/send the locale settings, otherwise it might cause unexpected problems. But we should allow to disable it

P.S. was my comment a wakeup call?:D

[chris-rock]

I was not sleeping @artem-sidorenko :-) All good, sounds reasonable.