Bug 184361

Summary:	Locale settings and hal options ignored mounting removable devices
Product:	[Unmaintained] solid	Reporter:	Stefano Ferri <ferriste>
Component:	general	Assignee:	Kevin Ottens <ervin>
Status:	RESOLVED WORKSFORME
Severity:	normal
Priority:	NOR
Version:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Slackware
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Stefano Ferri 2009-02-15 00:39:30 UTC

Version: (using KDE 4.2.0)
OS: Linux
Installed from: Slackware Packages

I'm reporting this bug in dolphin's sections, I don't know exactly wich component of kde is involved in removable devices mounting. Also konqueror is affected after a removable device has been mounting through dolphin or devices notifier in the taskbar, and shell-based operations as well after such a mount.

The probem is this: kde mounts devices not listed in /etc/fstab through Hal, but no utf8 or any kind of locale setting is passed to Hal. I've testes this bug with an usb pendrive and a mp3 player, both formatted in fat. After the device has been mounted, there is no way to handle non-latin characters (i.e. accented). This problem does not occur if I mount manually these devices (mount /dev/sda1 /mymountpoint) or if I use Xfce to mount it. I'm on Skackware 12.2.

Steps to reproduce: plug in a removable device (NOT listed in /etc/fstab), then try to create a file or a folder with an accented character: this one will be eliminated. i.e "relatività" becomes "relativit". If the device already contains names with non-latin characters, tehy won't be properly displayed. After mount operation, you can also use a shell and you will have the same problems.
But if you mount manually in a shell, all works fine. If you have Xfce, you will see that this problem in not present, too.

I hope this is not a specifc-distribution problem... I don't think it is an Hal's problem, Xfce should use it as well, and it works...

Comment 1 Kevin Ottens 2009-02-27 19:17:13 UTC

Just tested on KDE 4.2 and it mounts using utf8 as expected. We added code between 4.1 and 4.2 to handle that, so I'm slightly surprised that you reported it against 4.2. :-)

Anyway it works for me.

Comment 2 Stefano Ferri 2009-02-27 22:25:38 UTC

Maybe it is related to slackware packages, but only kde 4.2 in my system has this problem.
I took a look at hal's config files, and they seems ok, with utf8 options, but with Italian characters there are problems... Did you try to type "relatività" as a file name? Did you get the "à" in file name? Are you using an english keyboard with no accented letters?
For me, it is still not possible to use accents in file names (please do not confuse apostrophes with accents :-)
So it worksforyou, but for me it's still broken... :-(

Comment 3 Kevin Ottens 2009-02-27 22:47:05 UTC

I've a french keyboard, plenty of accents and weird characters to play with on it. ;-)

Just in case paste the output of "mount" (with no parameters) once your device is mounted to see if it got the right options. But here I definitely can't reproduce any problem.

Comment 4 Stefano Ferri 2009-03-02 21:18:52 UTC

Ah ok :-)

Well, the output of mount is this:

pendrive mounted with kde:
/dev/sda1 on /media/disk type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=hal,uid=1000,utf8)

pendrive mounted with xfce:
/dev/sda1 on /media/disk type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=hal,shortname=winnt,uid=1000)

Here there is no utf8 listed, but it works... while with kde, wich inserts utf8 in mount options, I cannot use accented letters...
Also if I manually mount with no utf8 options, it works...
I'm quite confused :-/

Comment 5 Stefano Ferri 2009-03-03 16:59:27 UTC

I've found the problem.

My locale was it_IT@euro. Now I've set it to it_IT.utf8 and it works fine, finally I can use accented letters. Locale has to be the same used by hal, otherwise there are problems with some characters.

It would be really nice if kde was able to find this conflict of settings: if system locale is not set to utf8, special characters don't work. Could kde check for this and say to the user the solution? It would be really simple and useful...

Maybe I will open a wish.