[Bug 1346] PAM environment takes precedence over SendEnv

[bugzilla-daemon at bugzilla.mindrot.org]

https://bugzilla.mindrot.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1346





--- Comment #11 from Jean-Christophe Dubacq <jcdubacq1 at free.fr>  2008-12-13 18:10:59 ---
As said by comment #7, the question is whether a user-set variable can
override an admin-set default value. /etc/environment is there for
default value. Currently, every setting there overrides
SendEnv/AcceptEnv passed value. This is what I think is the bug. In
non-English speaking countries, all computers are set to have a default
value for locale (the local language, be it French or Spanish or
Japanese). This value is useful for display login managers, and even
some tools that are daemonized. It is also useful for tty login (you do
not want each and every of your users to have to set their
.somethingshrc to the correct value). So there is (almost always) a
default value read (often through pam).

Passing SendEnv/AcceptEnv in priority to environment is important,
because of the great split between UTF-8 graphical environments and
ISO-8859-1 environments. Most environments are capable to cope with
both now, but this requires the locale to be set to the correct value
for the terminal of the viewer. And this can only be found by passing
prioritarily the value of LANG (and overriding the default local
value).

The importance of this bug is probably not seeable for people living in
English-speaking countries, or people where all default values use the
same encoding.

The usual logic in administration of computer systems is that user can
override the admin "default" settings (or the settings are made in
"mandatory" mode). Locale setting is not something that should be
considered mandatory, but really default.

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