[Bug 1886843] [NEW] unattended upgrade deleted my custom locales

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Ubuntu version: 16.04.1 LTS (Xenial).
$ lsb_release -rd
Description:    Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS
Release:        16.04

On my system, I need a couple of locales that are not installed by
default: fa_IR, fr_FR.ISO-8859-1, fr_FR.UTF-8, ja_JP.EUC-JP,
tr_TR.UTF-8, zh_CN.GB18030. I generated them many months ago, using
these commands:

sudo localedef -i fa_IR -f UTF-8 fa_IR
sudo localedef -i fr_FR -f ISO-8859-1 fr_FR.ISO-8859-1
sudo localedef -i fr_FR -f UTF-8 fr_FR.UTF-8
sudo localedef -i ja_JP -f EUC-JP ja_JP.EUC-JP
sudo localedef -i tr_TR -f UTF-8 tr_TR.UTF-8
sudo localedef -i zh_CN -f GB18030 zh_CN.GB18030

Today, I found that these locales are missing.

$ ls -l /usr/lib/locale/locale-archive
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4570528 Jul  7 06:57 /usr/lib/locale/locale-archive

The file /usr/lib/locale/locale-archive was modified yesterday, outside
of office hours.

The file /var/log/apt/history.log shows that there was an unattended
upgrade of the locale database at this time:

Start-Date: 2020-07-07  06:57:13
Commandline: /usr/bin/unattended-upgrade
Upgrade: libc6-dev-x32:amd64 (2.23-0ubuntu11, 2.23-0ubuntu11.2), libnss3-nssdb:amd64 (2:3.28.4-0ubuntu0.16.04.11, 2:3.28.4-0ubuntu0.16.04.12), libc6-dev-i386:amd64 (2.23-0ubuntu11, 2.23-0ubuntu11.2), libc6-dbg:amd64 (2.23-0ubuntu11, 2.23-0ubuntu11.2), libc6-dev:amd64 (2.23-0ubuntu11, 2.23-0ubuntu11.2), libc6-dev:i386 (2.23-0ubuntu11, 2.23-0ubuntu11.2), libc6:amd64 (2.23-0ubuntu11, 2.23-0ubuntu11.2), libc6:i386 (2.23-0ubuntu11, 2.23-0ubuntu11.2), linux-base:amd64 (4.5ubuntu1.1~16.04.1, 4.5ubuntu1.2~16.04.1), locales:amd64 (2.23-0ubuntu10, 2.23-0ubuntu11.2), libc-bin:amd64 (2.23-0ubuntu10, 2.23-0ubuntu11.2), libc6-x32:amd64 (2.23-0ubuntu11, 2.23-0ubuntu11.2), libc6-i386:amd64 (2.23-0ubuntu11, 2.23-0ubuntu11.2), libopenexr22:amd64 (2.2.0-10ubuntu2.2, 2.2.0-10ubuntu2.3), libc-dev-bin:amd64 (2.23-0ubuntu11, 2.23-0ubuntu11.2), multiarch-support:amd64 (2.23-0ubuntu10, 2.23-0ubuntu11.2), libnss3:amd64 (2:3.28.4-0ubuntu0.16.04.11, 2:3.28.4-0ubuntu0.16.04.12), glibc-doc:amd64 (2.23-0ubuntu10, 2.23-0ubuntu11.2)
End-Date: 2020-07-07  06:57:58

As you can see, the 'locales' packages was upgraded.

Apparently it has replaced the /usr/lib/locale/locale-archive file with
a new copy, that contains only the default locales (English and German
locales, since German is my preferred language).

It would be better if the 'locales' package, during an upgrade, would
1. take the list of installed locales (command 'locale -a'),
2. after deleting the /usr/lib/locale/locale-archive file, regenerate each such locale, using a command 'localedef -i LOCNAME -f ENCODING LOCNAME.ENCODING'.

** Affects: glibc (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New


** Tags: bot-comment
-- 
unattended upgrade deleted my custom locales
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1886843
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