It appears that glossaries.sty exists in texlive-latex-extra in Lucid, Precise, Quantal, and Raring [1]. Can you please try installing that package in one of the currently-supported Ubuntu versions and seeing if it fixes your issue?
[1] http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?searchon=contents&keywords=glossaries.sty&mode=exactfilename&suite=raring&arch=any
It appears that glossaries.sty exists in texlive-latex-extra in Lucid, Precise, Quantal, and Raring [1]. Can you please try installing that package in one of the currently-supported Ubuntu versions and seeing if it fixes your issue?
[1] http:// packages. ubuntu. com/search? searchon= contents& keywords= glossaries. sty&mode= exactfilename& suite=raring& arch=any