System->About Ubuntu homepage has glitchy "Thank you" line

Can you please ensure you install all updates, as I am not seeing this in my Intrepid installation.
Please include the output of the command "uname -a" in your next response. It should be one, long line of text which includes the exact kernel version you're running, as well as the CPU architecture.
Thank you.

Assigning to ubuntu-docs.

This might be locale specific. Can you tell me what locale you use, so I can try to recreate the issue? To do this, just run "echo $LANG" in a terminal.

Thanks

All updates have been downloaded.

uname -a
Linux hp530 2.6.27-9-generic #1 SMP Thu Nov 20 21:57:00 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux

echo $LANG
en_US.UTF-8

Nothing out of the ordinary here I guess...

I don't think this is a locale specific issue - I can't reproduce this bug with any of the different English speaking locales that the about-ubuntu document provides. Please can you try two things:

1. Open a terminal and type 'yelp' (without the inverted commas) and then Enter. Then when the window opens, type the key combination Ctrl + L, then enter 'ghelp:about-ubuntu' (without the inverted commas). Check whether you see the problem, and report back here. When you do, also paste whatever output/error messages have appeared in the terminal window while you were doing that. Hopefully there will be something useful.

2. Open a terminal and run the command 'xmllint --noout --noent --postvalid --xinclude /usr/share/gnome/help/about-ubuntu/C/about-ubuntu.xml' (without the inverted commas). If there are any messages, paste them here.

Thanks

attached is number 1:
connor@lappy686-mk2:~$ yelp > about-ubuntu.txt 2>&1

attached is number 2:
connor@lappy686-mk2:~$ xmllint --noout --noent --postvalid --xinclude /usr/share/gnome/help/about-ubuntu/C/about-ubuntu.xml > xmlint.txt 2>&1

Both commands were printing to STDERR, hence the need for 2>&1

I'll leave the triage to you. Thanks.

Ok, the problem is caused by the absence of these files:

/usr/share/gnome/help/libs/global.ent
/usr/share/gnome/help/libs/gnome-menus-C.ent

They should be installed by the ubuntu-docs package, but apparently are not on your system. They are present on mind. I will dig a bit further into this.

Connor - what is the output of these commands?

dpkg -S /usr/share/gnome/help/libs
ls -al /usr/share/gnome/help/libs

It appears that those two files do not exist and that the directory /usr/share/gnome/help/libs is empty.

connor@lappy686-mk2:~$ ls -l /usr/share/gnome/help/libs/global.ent
ls: cannot access /usr/share/gnome/help/libs/global.ent: No such file or directory

connor@lappy686-mk2:~$ ls -l /usr/share/gnome/help/libs/gnome-menus-C.ent
ls: cannot access /usr/share/gnome/help/libs/gnome-menus-C.ent: No such file or directory

connor@lappy686-mk2:~$ dpkg -S /usr/share/gnome/help/libs
ubuntu-docs: /usr/share/gnome/help/libs

connor@lappy686-mk2:~$ ls -al /usr/share/gnome/help/libs
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2008-11-17 18:34 .
drwxr-xr-x 114 root root 4096 2008-11-19 16:33 ..

On my system (Jaunty), /usr/share/gnome/help/libs is a directory.

This is probably because debian/rules tries to create that directory
while installing documents with commands included below the comment
"Install the documents; skip documents which are less than 75% translated"

In particular, these lines seem responsible to actually create the above directory:
if [ -e $$doc/$$lang/$$doc.xml ]; then \
 mkdir -p debian/ubuntu-docs/usr/share/gnome/help/$$doc/$$lang/; \
 cp $$doc/$$lang/*xml debian/ubuntu-docs/usr/share/gnome/help/$$doc/$$lang/; \
fi

dh_link won't overwrite an existing directory, so link is not created.

Hi Luca,

Thanks for the comment.

On Sun, Jan 4, 2009 at 3:41 PM, Luca Falavigna <email address hidden> wrote:
> On my system (Jaunty), /usr/share/gnome/help/libs is a directory.
>
> This is probably because debian/rules tries to create that directory
> while installing documents with commands included below the comment
> "Install the documents; skip documents which are less than 75% translated"
>
> In particular, these lines seem responsible to actually create the above directory:
> if [ -e $$doc/$$lang/$$doc.xml ]; then \
> mkdir -p debian/ubuntu-docs/usr/share/gnome/help/$$doc/$$lang/; \
> cp $$doc/$$lang/*xml debian/ubuntu-docs/usr/share/gnome/help/$$doc/$$lang/; \
> fi

I don't think those lines should create a directory called "libs",
they should only create directories with the names of documents
($$doc). Could you explain further why you think that those lines are
responsible for the problem?

--
Matthew East
http://www.mdke.org
gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF

dpkg wont convert a directory to a symlink or vice-versa on upgrades; that is if an older version of ubuntu-docs used to ship a /foo/bar symlink and the new version ships a /foo/bar dir, it will result in a symlink. (This is considered a feature of dpkg which allows symlinking e.g. /usr to /mnt/large-space-device).

So I'd look at the .deb history and see whether it used to ship a directory in place of the symlink and fix this in the preinst.

I encountered this on my system today. I upgraded from 8.04 soon after 8.10 was released. I've kept my system up to date.

Loïc - ubuntu-docs shipped a /usr/share/gnome/help/libs directory in Hardy and previous versions. It is only a symlink in Intrepid. So, users upgrading from to Intrepid would experience this if you are correct when you say that dpkg wouldn't overwrite the folder with the new symlink.

for anyone that has this issue and wishes to fix it on their system, the following worked for me:
sudo rmdir /usr/share/gnome/help/libs
sudo apt-get --reinstall install ubuntu-docs

Adding the following to debian/ubuntu-docs.postinst before the ";;" line should do the job:

        link=/usr/share/gnome/help/libs
        if [ -d "$link" ] && ! [ -L "$link" ] \
           && dpkg --compare-versions "$2" lt-nl <version-which-fixes-this>
        then
                rmdir "$link"
                ln -s ../../ubuntu-docs/libs "$link"
        fi

N.B.: replace 'version-which-fixes-this' with 9.04.6 for jaunty, and 8.10.3 for intrepid (this should be a candidate for an SRU to 8.10).

I do not see this problem in up to date Jaunty.
Here is a screenshot of what i see since i can't copy and paste it.

I'd be grateful if someone experiencing this bug and running Jaunty could try installing the attached deb file, and report on whether this fixes the issue.

Thank you.

Ok, I've reproduced the bug and tested the fix, so uploading to Jaunty.

This bug was fixed in the package ubuntu-docs - 9.04.6

---------------
ubuntu-docs (9.04.6) jaunty; urgency=low

  * Remove deprecated directory at /usr/share/gnome/help/libs (LP: #303578)
    - Thanks to Steve Langasek for the fix

 -- Matthew East <email address hidden> Mon, 30 Mar 2009 18:09:05 +0100

no, the http://launchpadlibrarian.net/24562564/ubuntu-docs_9.04.6_all.deb does not do the trick. I still get:
[code]Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information
Initializing package states... Done
The following partially installed packages will be configured:
  ubuntu-docs
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B of archives. After unpacking 0B will be used.
Setting up ubuntu-docs (9.04.6) ...
/var/lib/dpkg/info/ubuntu-docs.postinst: 21: Syntax error: newline unexpected
dpkg: error processing ubuntu-docs (--configure):
 subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 2
Errors were encountered while processing:
 ubuntu-docs
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
A package failed to install. Trying to recover:
Setting up ubuntu-docs (9.04.6) ...
/var/lib/dpkg/info/ubuntu-docs.postinst: 21: Syntax error: newline unexpected
dpkg: error processing ubuntu-docs (--configure):
 subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 2
Errors were encountered while processing:
 ubuntu-docs
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information
Initializing package states... Done[/code]

zika - you've encountered bug 353117, which is fixed in ubuntu-docs 9.04.7, available shortly from the archives.

It seems that bug 329648 addresses this and one other related issues, namely the "About This Document" or "Version and Release Numbers" pages in Yelp. Those should be verified with this bug as well.

Running Ubuntu 8.10, I got this error. I'm not a very skilled user, and when I tried installing ubuntu-docs_9.04.6_all.deb it seemed to give a lot of errors, so I exited with ctrl-C and crashed scrollkeeper. I was able to recover by using Synaptic Package Manager to completely remove ubuntu-docs, then re-install it (version 8.10.2). This also resolved the bug: I now see "Thank you for your interest in Ubuntu 8.10
                - the Intrepid Ibex - released in October 2008."

Thanks
--Steve Watson

Just upgraded to 8.10, from 8.04, got this output in System > About Ubuntu:
"Thank you for your interest in Ubuntu - the - released in ."

Upgrade was performed via Update Manager.

Then purged ubuntu-docs, and reinstalled ubuntu-docs. Now get:
"Thank you for your interest in Ubuntu 8.10 - the Intrepid Ibex - released in October 2008."
Yay!

I know it was fixed in 9.04.6, but,
Steve Langasek wrote on 2009-03-30:
"...
(this should be a candidate for an SRU to 8.10)."
I agree.

--joe

I've uploaded ubuntu-docs version 8.10.3 to the intrepid-proposed repository for those running Ubuntu 8.10. Please could the ubuntu-sru team (subscribed) approve the upload and announce here for testing. slangasek noted in comment 7 that this is a candidate for an SRU but let me know if you have any questions.

The package referred to in the previous comment was rejected as it had problems. I've uploaded a fixed package to intrepid-proposed. Please could the ubuntu-sru team review and approve if satisfactory.

I'll attach a debdiff.

Intrepid goes EOL in less than two months, and this isn't a showstopper bug at all, so let's not worry about this for intrepid any more.

Not a problem. I've moved on to Jaunty, Karmic, and CentOS and forgotten
about this one. Thanks.
--Steve

On Thu, Mar 4, 2010 at 4:19 AM, Martin Pitt <email address hidden> wrote:

> Intrepid goes EOL in less than two months, and this isn't a showstopper
> bug at all, so let's not worry about this for intrepid any more.
>
> ** Changed in: ubuntu-docs (Ubuntu Intrepid)
> Status: Triaged => Won't Fix
>
> --
> System->About Ubuntu homepage has glitchy "Thank you" line
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/303578
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

Thanks Martin, fine by me. I'm on 9.10 now.

Graham

On Thu, 04 Mar 2010 09:19 +0000, "Martin Pitt" <email address hidden>
wrote:
> Intrepid goes EOL in less than two months, and this isn't a showstopper
> bug at all, so let's not worry about this for intrepid any more.
>
> ** Changed in: ubuntu-docs (Ubuntu Intrepid)
> Status: Triaged => Won't Fix
>
> --
> System->About Ubuntu homepage has glitchy "Thank you" line
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/303578
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of a duplicate bug.
>
> Status in “ubuntu-docs” package in Ubuntu: Fix Released
> Status in “ubuntu-docs” source package in Intrepid: Won't Fix
> Status in “ubuntu-docs” source package in Jaunty: Fix Released
>
> Bug description:
> Click System, then "About Ubuntu"
>
> On the page that is displayed, the second paragraph is:
>
> "Thank you for your interest in Ubuntu - the - released in ."
>
> Running Ubuntu 8.10, upgraded from 8.04. I do not know how it appeared in
> 8.04.
>
> To unsubscribe from this bug, go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-docs/+bug/303578/+subscribe
>