snapcraft's lxc command string is not working without LANG=C on Ubuntu Touch
Metadata
Current evaluation
LXC exec command times out on Ubuntu Touch due to locale/encoding issues with env command string; untriaged, no maintainer response after 65 days.
Suggested action: needs triage
Reason: The issue has no labels, no maintainer response, and 0 comments after 65 days. It reports a subprocess.TimeoutExpired when running LXC commands on Ubuntu Touch, with the user noting LANG=C is required for correct env string interpretation. A maintainer needs to assess whether this is a valid bug in locale handling or a configuration issue for a non-standard environment.
Impact:
20
Quick Win:
12.0
Staleness:
65
Complexity:
40
Confidence:
40
Support Request:
60
Issue body
### Check existing issues
- [x] I've verified that this bug isn't described by any existing issues.
### Bug description
Running Ubuntu Touch on the arm64 JingPad A1 with Android kernel 4.14 and have Docker working, so I know container technologies are running properly on the vendor kernel. For LXC client commands required LANG=C to interpret the `env` command string correctly, there would be unknown characters when reading those strings.
### Steps to reproduce
- `cd` into a snapcraft project and run:
- `snapcraft pack`
### Environment
We need to understand the context in which Snapcraft failed. Please let us know if you are running Snapcraft in destructive mode, whether you are using LXD or Multipass, and which operating system you are running Snapcraft on.
### snapcraft.yaml
```yaml
# any
```
### Log output
```shell
2026-07-02 15:46:49.359 File "/snap/snapcraft/current/usr/lib/python3.12/subprocess.py", line 2116, in _communicate
2026-07-02 15:46:49.359 self._check_timeout(endtime, orig_timeout, stdout, stderr)
2026-07-02 15:46:49.359 File "/snap/snapcraft/current/usr/lib/python3.12/subprocess.py", line 1253, in _check_timeout
2026-07-02 15:46:49.359 raise TimeoutExpired(
2026-07-02 15:46:49.359 subprocess.TimeoutExpired: Command '['lxc', '--project', 'snapcraft', 'exec', 'local:base-instance-snapcraft-buildd-base-v71--f02c2da881cfba9d7924', '--', 'env', 'CRAFT_MANAGED_MODE=1', 'SNAPCRAFT_DEBUG=False', 'SNAPCRAFT_LXD_REMOTE=local', 'SNAPCRAFT_LAUNCHPAD_INSTANCE=production', 'DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive', 'DEBCONF_NONINTERACTIVE_SEEN=true', 'DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical', 'systemctl', 'is-system-running']' timed out after 0.25 seconds
2026-07-02 15:46:49.359
2026-07-02 15:46:49.359 The above exception was the direct cause of the following exception:
2026-07-02 15:46:49.359 Traceback (most recent call last):
2026-07-02 15:46:49.359 File "/snap/snapcraft/x1/lib/python3.12/site-packages/craft_providers/lxd/lxd_provider.py", line 221, in launched_environment
2026-07-02 15:46:49.359 instance = launch(
2026-07-02 15:46:49.359 ^^^^^^^
2026-07-02 15:46:49.359 File "/snap/snapcraft/x1/lib/python3.12/site-packages/craft_providers/lxd/launcher.py", line 870, in launch
2026-07-02 15:46:49.359 _create_instance(
2026-07-02 15:46:49.359 File "/snap/snapcraft/x1/lib/python3.12/site-packages/craft_providers/lxd/launcher.py", line 167, in _create_instance
2026-07-02 15:46:49.359 base_configuration.setup(executor=base_instance, mount_cache=False)
2026-07-02 15:46:49.359 File "/snap/snapcraft/x1/lib/python3.12/site-packages/craft_providers/base.py", line 1062, in setup
2026-07-02 15:46:49.359 self._setup_wait_for_system_ready(executor=executor)
```
Evaluation history
| Date | Model | Scores | Action | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| qwen3.6-35b-a3b-mtp-q6 |
Impact:
20
Quick Win:
12.0
Staleness:
65
Complexity:
40
Confidence:
40
Support Request:
60
|
needs triage | LXC exec command times out on Ubuntu Touch due to locale/encoding issues with env command string; untriaged, no maintainer response after 65 days. | |
| qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b |
Staleness:
40
Complexity:
40
Confidence:
80
Support Request:
20
|
needs triage | snapcraft pack fails with a subprocess timeout when executing lxc commands on Ubuntu Touch arm64. Author notes LANG=C is required to parse environment strings correctly. Unlabelled, zero maintainer comments, 20 days old. | |
| qwen3.6-35b-a3b-mtp-q6 |
Staleness:
15
Complexity:
45
Confidence:
90
Support Request:
10
|
needs triage | snapcraft pack fails with a subprocess timeout when executing LXC commands on Ubuntu Touch unless LANG=C is set. Unlabelled, no maintainer response, awaiting triage. | |
| qwen3.6-35b-a3b-mtp-q6 |
Staleness:
5
Complexity:
45
Confidence:
90
Support Request:
20
|
needs triage | Fresh bug report about snapcraft's lxc exec command timing out on Ubuntu Touch due to LANG=C environment handling. Awaiting maintainer triage. |
Update history
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Related issues
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