"guix system reconfigure" doesn't work with LC_ALL=C - and locale problems

Because of the locale problems every time there is a merge, I've tried to upgrade

as follows:

sudo -i

LC_ALL=C guix system reconfigure /etc/config.scm

downloading from https://ci.guix.gnu.org/nar/lzip/532l4zja85y9c69i0l0bwnsxx98gpzdw-nss-certs-3.45...

nss-certs-3.45 135KiB 104.5MiB/s 00:00 [######## ] 47.4%Backtrace:

3 (apply-smob/1 #<catch-closure 1083000>)

In ice-9/boot-9.scm:

705:2 2 (call-with-prompt _ _ #<procedure default-prompt-handle?>)

In ice-9/eval.scm:

619:8 1 (_ #(#(#<directory (guile-user) 10e6140>)))

In guix/ui.scm:

1692:12 0 (run-guix-command _ . _)

guix/ui.scm:1692:12: In procedure run-guix-command:

Throw to key `encoding-error' with args `("scm_to_stringn" "cannot convert wide string to output locale" 84 #f #f)'.

Can we please do something about these encoding problems once and for all?

Most have standardized on UTF-8 in like 2000, so why does this keep happening?

Also, what is it that changes the locale database format so fundamentally each

and every time that it can't be used any more? Human culture doesn't change that

quickly :P

The reason I set LC_ALL=C is because with my usual language setting I cannot see

where the log file is when a build failure occurs:

^ You got this E-Mail right. That's what it said.

That is very bad usability.

If there's an official way to make these upgrades not break (automatically update

in a cron job, say), is it documented in the manual how to do that?

On the other hand:

$ LC_ALL=de_AT.utf8 guix package -u . # With broken locales.

[...]

^ You got this E-Mail right. That's what it said.

$ LC_ALL=C guix package -u . # With broken locales.

[...]

View build log at '/var/log/guix/drvs/3y/jqbvjchd344qwg62x0gbj95dx0vfk9-simple-scan-3.24.1.drv.bz2'.

There it works.

Furthermore, I cannot log in on the Linux console. It doesn't ask for the

password and doesn't let me log in either. (I wanted to see whether the

text console does the same--well, I guess we won't know)

After retrying "reconfigure" a few more times, it did work. Now I rebooted and

now I can also log into the Linux console again. Locale problems seem to be

gone away--for now.

Note that I report this stuff because it's a general problem all our users see

(and probably never report--they just delete Guix instead).

merge 37662 37688

tags 37662 fixed

close 37662

quit