SteamLinuxRuntime: locales might not work as intended on Clear Linux

[smcv]

Originally reported by @K1ngfish3r in ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux#10577, but I'm separating this into its own more specific issue report, because it's a side issue rather than the main point of ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux#10577 and ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux#10789.

Your system information

• Steam Runtime Version: (not relevant)
• Distribution (e.g. Ubuntu 18.04): ClearLinux
• Link to your full system information: (not provided)
• Have you checked for system updates?: (not provided)
• What compatibility tool are you using?: SLR 3.0 sniper
• What versions are listed in steamapps/common/SteamLinuxRuntime/VERSIONS.txt? (not relevant)
• What versions are listed in steamapps/common/SteamLinuxRuntime_soldier/VERSIONS.txt? (not relevant)
• What versions are listed in steamapps/common/SteamLinuxRuntime_sniper/VERSIONS.txt? both 0.20240321.82093 and 0.20240307.80401 reproduce this issue

Steps to reproduce

• Run Steam with either LANG=C.UTF-8 or LANG=en_US.UTF-8 in the environment, and no other locale environment variables set
• Look at steamwebhelper.log

Expected result

No warnings, startup is as fast as would normally be feasible

Actual result

setlocale "en_US.UTF-8": No such file or directory
pressure-vessel-locale-gen: Missing locale en_US.UTF-8
pressure-vessel-locale-gen: Generating locale en_US.UTF-8...
pressure-vessel-locale-gen: Generated locale en_US.UTF-8 successfully
pressure-vessel-adverb[19866]: W: Container startup will be faster if missing locales are created at OS level

It is not yet clear whether this is misconfiguration on @K1ngfish3r's system, or a limitation in SLR where it does not understand the filesystem layout used in ClearLinux.

[smcv]

@K1ngfish3r, this is a side issue from your comments elsewhere. I'd like to diagnose whether this is misconfiguration on your system, or whether this is a SLR limitation.

To use a locale, it is not sufficient to set LANG=en_US.UTF-8: you also need glibc to have the appropriate locale data available. I don't know how this is meant to work on ClearLinux, but in most distros (Debian/Ubuntu and Arch), there are two ways you can get locale data:

1. Install a package that provides precompiled locale data for every supported locale. In Debian/Ubuntu this is the locales-all package, and it provides files like these:

/usr/lib/locale/en_US.utf8/LC_ADDRESS
/usr/lib/locale/en_US.utf8/LC_COLLATE
/usr/lib/locale/en_US.utf8/LC_CTYPE
/usr/lib/locale/en_US.utf8/LC_IDENTIFICATION
/usr/lib/locale/en_US.utf8/LC_MEASUREMENT
/usr/lib/locale/en_US.utf8/LC_MESSAGES/SYS_LC_MESSAGES
/usr/lib/locale/en_US.utf8/LC_MONETARY
/usr/lib/locale/en_US.utf8/LC_NAME
/usr/lib/locale/en_US.utf8/LC_NUMERIC
/usr/lib/locale/en_US.utf8/LC_PAPER
/usr/lib/locale/en_US.utf8/LC_TELEPHONE
/usr/lib/locale/en_US.utf8/LC_TIME

2. Install a package that provides files like /usr/share/i18n/locales/en_US, and run a tool that will generate a file with only the locales you want. In Debian/Ubuntu, this is the locales package, and you select the locales you want by uncommenting one or more lines in /etc/locale.gen and then running locale-gen, which generates /usr/lib/locale/locale-archive for you.

As a result of some annoying historical factors, Steam and Steam games want to see an en_US.UTF-8 locale, even if the OS does not provide one, and even though in 2024, C.UTF-8 is better for that purpose. For example, as a British user of Debian, I would normally have only en_GB.UTF-8 and C.UTF-8 locales (but not en_US.UTF-8), but Steam wants me to set up en_US.UTF-8 as well.

I don't know how this works on ClearLinux - the paths I quoted are right for Debian/Ubuntu and for Arch, but I know ClearLinux sometimes diverges from other distros. What are the paths that it uses?

And, did you already set up your system so that en_US.UTF-8 is a locale that is available? An easy way to check this is to run:

LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 perl -e ''

If the en_US.UTF-8 locale is correctly set up, it should exit with status 0 and no output.

If the en_US.UTF-8 locale doesn't work, it will log messages that look something like this:

perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
	LANGUAGE = "en_GB:en",
	LC_ALL = "en_US.UTF-8",
	LANG = "en_GB.UTF-8"
    are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to a fallback locale ("en_GB.UTF-8").

[K1ngfish3r]

erm

i@clr~ $ sudo swupd search-file /usr/share/i18n/locales/en_US
Downloading all Clear Linux manifests
 [100%]

Searching for '/usr/share/i18n/locales/en_US'

Bundle glibc-locale [installed] (1130 MB on system)
	/usr/share/i18n/locales/en_US

i@clr~ $ cat /usr/share/defaults/etc/locale.conf
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
i@clr~ $ locale
locale     localectl  localedef
i@clr~ $ locale
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=
i@clr~ $ LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 perl -e ''
i@clr~ $ perl --version

This is perl 5, version 38, subversion 2 (v5.38.2) built for x86_64-linux-thread-multi...

Pre-compiled locales were not provided so I tried finding /usr/share/i18n/locales/en_US, which I seem to have installed already. Then I tried to locate /usr/share/defaults/etc/locale.gen but there was only a locale.conf with a single line inside it. I also do not have the locale-gen command, but I did have a locale. Then I tried the final command and got no errors.

Should I go about obtaining locale-gen and compiling the locale?

[smcv]

It looks as though Clear Linux must be using some path for the compiled locales that is not one of the ones we know about. Are there other paths like SYS_LC_MESSAGES or locale-archive?

Note that if swupd search-file is searching the package manager's database, it will not necessarily find any files that are dynamically generated on the end-user system (they might be below /var somewhere).

[smcv]

From experimenting with a ClearLinux live-image, ClearLinux uses various non-standard paths for locales:

• /var/cache/locale/locale-archive as its equivalent of Debian's /usr/lib/locale/locale-archive
• /var/cache/locale/locale.alias as its equivalent of Debian's /usr/lib/locale/locale.alias -> /etc/locale.alias symlink
• /usr/share/locale as its equivalent of Debian's /usr/lib/locale

This is awkward, because /usr/share/locale already means something different (it's where third-party software like GTK installs locale files), so we can't just overwrite it with a symlink to the host copy like we do on other OSs with an atypical locale setup.