[regression] if switched to non english local, the keyboard does not come up when an input field is focused

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

Can't reproduce with r34 on mako but encountered it from time to time in previous images.

can't reproduce with r32 or r34 on mako as well, I think need a refined test case.

(even if I saw it sometimes, without no .crash file for maliit :/)

just a note, this worked fine on r10 on the mako (where the only the trusty channel is used) with the same setup

Confirmed with image 35 on maguro.

The 100% CPU of maliit-server and maliit-server not coming up is caused by libpinyin4 trying to read its conf file, see bt:
http://pastebin.ubuntu.com/6510210/

When changing the language of the device in the settings, LC_NUMERIC is set to LC_NUMERIC=en_DK.UTF-8.
We are using libpinyin 0.93 which seems to have trouble to read its conf with wrong locale settings, but 0.94 contains a commit that fixes the issue on libpinyins side temporarily setting LC_NUMERIC to C:
https://github.com/libpinyin/libpinyin/commit/8abc8cfd97cfe63c8e26e0838d4c825283b30630

When setting this to C myself in env, I am able to get maliit-server up and running: export LC_NUMERIC=C

Solutions:
a) LC_NUMERIC=en_DK.UTF-8 doesn't look correct to me
b) backporting the fix from libpinyin 0.94
c) upgrading libpinyin

Note: in another MR we are preparing language plugins, which separates those dependencies and only the pinyin plugin will actually be linked to libpinyin.

ah excellent! Thanks for diving in!
What would your advice be/what should we do in the shorter term to get that fixed?

well, i'm pretty sure (depening on where maliit pulls its locale) that my LC_NUMERIC is properly set to de_DE.UTF-8 here when this issue happens:

phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~$ cat .pam_environment
LANGUAGE=de
LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_NUMERIC=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_TIME=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_MONETARY=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_PAPER=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_NAME=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_ADDRESS=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_TELEPHONE=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_MEASUREMENT=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_IDENTIFICATION=de_DE.UTF-8
PAPERSIZE=a4
phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~$

@ogra yes, but it needs to be set to C in order to work with this version of libpinyin
@didrocks: hotfix would be setting LC_NUMERIC to C in upstart just for maliit-server. But we should either backport the fix in libpinyin 0.93, or better upgrade to 0.94.

the hotfix is to find the needed patch in libpinyin and upload update libpinyin4 with that.
setting LC_NUMERIC to C is wrong =) please don't do that, we actually want all the locales supported properly, and it's a bug if something cannot work under LC_* != C.

This bug was fixed in the package libpinyin - 0.9.93+repack1-1ubuntu1

---------------
libpinyin (0.9.93+repack1-1ubuntu1) trusty; urgency=low

  * Cherrypick from upstream to force C locale when loading table.conf
    (LP: #1255999)
 -- Dmitrijs Ledkovs <email address hidden> Tue, 03 Dec 2013 15:59:58 +0000