Comment 135 for bug 249340

I'd like to regretfully add that this bug is very much present in all these releases: 7.04, 7.10, 8.04, 8.10.

Granted, it's not easily reproducible but it does affect a lot of users (regardless of one's linux know-how).

The problem almost certainly lies in one of the localedef subroutines and is not bound to the underlying kernel (I have tried both downgrading the belocs-locale-bin package in 8.04 and updating it on a 7.04 release to no avail). Since this is in the gnu c lib it is understandably not an ubuntu maintained code. Alas, with ubuntu being the most wide spread distro among desktop users (feel free to correct me on this), it receives the most user feedback.

Instead of pretty much rejecting the idea of trying to figure out where the code fails (for which I have to agree with you, if it's not reproducible there's no point to go out on a wild goose chase), I 'd like to offer an alternative.

Localedef appears to check sth (most likely the contents of the folder /usr/lib/locale) and if it needs to install a new locale/variation combo it returns "done" if everything was executed properly or if nothing needs to be updated it returns "up-to-date" for each locale/variation already installed. In my case I almost always either get a segmentation fault or worse, the machine reboots.

The proposal is simply this and on the condition that the files being installed are 100% generic and independent of any user/setup options (a condition I believe pretty much applies). Offer the contents of the /usr/lib/locale folder for the most popular (if not all) locales as a download (for each locale separately). In this fashion, if one was to copy these files to /usr/lib/locale and install/update a locale, localedef would consider the specific locale/variation to be up-to-date and proceed without causing any errors. And no, I haven't tried it but I'm pretty certain this workaround will work.

At the very least please take this proposal into serious consideration. Being a proponent of free (but user-friendly) software I find myself questioning my decision to use open source code be that a java library or an OS. Too many times have I found myself trying to solve a non-trivial issue (and sometimes finding it impossible to come up with a decent workaround) , wasting a lot of time I could have devoted to more serious matters. This is an easy workaround for those few(?) of us unlucky to have been entangled. Plz help.