[Bug 2035122] Please test proposed package

[Brian Murray]

Hello Sergio, or anyone else affected,

Accepted systemd into jammy-proposed. The package will build now and be
available at
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/systemd/249.11-0ubuntu3.12 in a few
hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package.  See
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation on how
to enable and use -proposed.  Your feedback will aid us getting this
update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug,
mentioning the version of the package you tested, what testing has been
performed on the package and change the tag from verification-needed-
jammy to verification-done-jammy. If it does not fix the bug for you,
please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-
failed-jammy. In either case, without details of your testing we will
not be able to proceed.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification .  Thank you in
advance for helping!

N.B. The updated package will be released to -updates after the bug(s)
fixed by this package have been verified and the package has been in
-proposed for a minimum of 7 days.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/2035122

Title:
  Under ubuntu core/core-desktop, /etc/default/locale is not modifiable

Status in systemd package in Ubuntu:
  New
Status in systemd source package in Jammy:
  Fix Committed
Status in systemd source package in Lunar:
  Won't Fix
Status in systemd source package in Mantic:
  Won't Fix

Bug description:
  [Impact]

  When working with ubuntu core or ubuntu core desktop, neither
  */etc/default/locale* nor */etc/default/keyboard* are modifiable, so
  it's not possible to set the global keyboard or the global language.
  This is required to allow to set the GDM language, and the default one
  during installation.

  The first half of the solution is to create the folder
  */etc/writable/default*, and make soft-links from
  */etc/default/locale* to */etc/writable/default/locale* and from
  */etc/default/keyboard* to */etc/writable/default/keyboard*, just like
  it is already being done with */etc/hostname*, */etc/issue*,
  */etc/localtime*, */etc/motd* and , */etc/timezone*.

  This solution, unfortunately, isn't complete. Although any application
  that just reads the files will work, not all of the applications that
  write to them will; specifically the systemd utilities that set the
  contents for those files, because they don't open the file directly;
  instead, they create first the new file in the same folder than the
  old one, fill its contents, and only then delete the old one and
  rename the new one. To solve this, systemd in Ubuntu already has
  several patches that detect if a file is a soft-link, in which case it
  replaces the old path with the destination one.

  Currently I have in place a patch for Ubuntu Core Desktop that
  implements both changes for both */etc/default/locale* and
  */etc/default/keyboard*.

  [Test plan]

  Using *sudo localectl set-lang LANG="xx_YY.UTF-8"* in an Ubuntu Core
  or Ubuntu Core Desktop admin terminal must change the locale to the
  specified one, which can be checked by reading the
  */etc/default/locale* file. Also, *localectl* must return the new
  locale.

  [Where problems could occur]

  In general, applications just read the content of the file and use the
  DBus interface to set the locale, so only those applications that
  modify by themselves the */etc/default/keyboard* and/or
  */etc/default/locale* would present a problem, in which case they
  would require specific patches. Anyway, those applications neither
  would work with the current state (with those files in a read-only
  filesystem).

  [Other info]

  For Noble, this will be addressed when we merge systemd v255 from
  Debian. This is only needed on core, so we don't need to fix for
  Mantic or Lunar.

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