language locales disappear after recent update

[Flood Xavier]

I did a fresh install of Ubuntu 10.10 with English (US) as the default language. After installing, I install Arabic via Language Support under System>Administration. I then added the Arabic keyboard layout via System>Preferences>Keyboard.

All the locales were fine. I was able to login with Arabic menus and windows. I typed "locale -a" in the terminal and saw all the different Arabic locales installed.

This was fine for a couple of days. On Thursday, I did an update via Update Manager and had all recommended and security updates checked off. During the downloading and installing of updates I saw an error, something like this:
ar_SA.UTF-8... cannot open locale definition file `ar_SA': No such file or directory
failed

For each of the Arabic locales. I was surprised, so I went back to Language Support and saw that Arabic was installed as a language, but it was no longer present in the list of "Language for menus and windows." So I did a search on the Ubuntu Forums and saw people recommending: sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales

I tried that, but it generates the same errors. So I uninstalled Arabic from Language Support and then reinstalled it. But it won't appear anymore in the "Language for menus and windows" although I can type in Arabic in any program, including Firefox, gedit, etc.

I tried "sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales" again after uninstalling and reinstalling Arabic. But I get the same error messages for each of the Arabic locales:
ar_SA.UTF-8... cannot open locale definition file `ar_SA': No such file or directory
failed

[Flood Xavier (floodx)]

This is all of what I get when I try: sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales

Generating locales...
ar_AE.UTF-8... cannot open locale definition file `ar_AE': No such file or directory
failed
ar_BH.UTF-8... cannot open locale definition file `ar_BH': No such file or directory
failed
ar_DZ.UTF-8... cannot open locale definition file `ar_DZ': No such file or directory
failed
ar_EG.UTF-8... cannot open locale definition file `ar_EG': No such file or directory
failed
ar_IN.UTF-8... cannot open locale definition file `ar_IN': No such file or directory
failed
ar_IQ.UTF-8... cannot open locale definition file `ar_IQ': No such file or directory
failed
ar_JO.UTF-8... cannot open locale definition file `ar_JO': No such file or directory
failed
ar_KW.UTF-8... cannot open locale definition file `ar_KW': No such file or directory
failed
ar_LB.UTF-8... cannot open locale definition file `ar_LB': No such file or directory
failed
ar_LY.UTF-8... cannot open locale definition file `ar_LY': No such file or directory
failed
ar_MA.UTF-8... cannot open locale definition file `ar_MA': No such file or directory
failed
ar_OM.UTF-8... cannot open locale definition file `ar_OM': No such file or directory
failed
ar_QA.UTF-8... cannot open locale definition file `ar_QA': No such file or directory
failed
ar_SA.UTF-8... cannot open locale definition file `ar_SA': No such file or directory
failed
ar_SD.UTF-8... cannot open locale definition file `ar_SD': No such file or directory
failed
ar_SY.UTF-8... cannot open locale definition file `ar_SY': No such file or directory
failed
ar_TN.UTF-8... cannot open locale definition file `ar_TN': No such file or directory
failed
ar_YE.UTF-8... cannot open locale definition file `ar_YE': No such file or directory
failed
en_AG.UTF-8... done
en_AU.UTF-8... done
en_BW.UTF-8... done
en_CA.UTF-8... done
en_DK.UTF-8... cannot open locale definition file `da_DK': No such file or directory
failed
en_GB.UTF-8... done
en_HK.UTF-8... done
en_IE.UTF-8... done
en_IN.UTF-8... cannot open locale definition file `hi_IN': No such file or directory
failed
en_NG.UTF-8... cannot open locale definition file `da_DK': No such file or directory
failed
en_NZ.UTF-8... done
en_PH.UTF-8... cannot open locale definition file `tl_PH': No such file or directory
failed
en_SG.UTF-8... done
en_US.UTF-8... done
en_ZA.UTF-8... done
en_ZW.UTF-8... done
Generation complete.

[Flood Xavier (floodx)]

I fixed it by reinstalling the "locales" package via the Synaptic Package Manager, although it would be nice to know what broke it.