[Bug 1886843] Re: unattended upgrade deleted my custom locales

[Bruno Haible]

Thanks for the hint. That should work for next time.
Although I would have found it nicer if the distro had not created an additional layer on top of 'localedef'.

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Title:
  unattended upgrade deleted my custom locales

Status in glibc package in Ubuntu:
  Invalid

Bug description:
  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'.

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