tzdate upgrade fails wih invalid format error during Xenial upgrade

[iMac]

Everything looks fine; Not sure what is invalid about the format. I am EST, the output is in UTC.

Breaks the upgrade after from 15.05 at a point where is says it completed with errors, but some 200+ packages remaining.

Setting up tzdata (2016a-1) ...

Current default time zone: 'America/Toronto'
date: invalid date 'Sun Mar 13 02:32:57 UTC 2016'
dpkg: error processing package tzdata (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 tzdata
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 16.04
Package: tzdata 2016a-1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.2.0-30.36-generic 4.2.8-ckt3
Uname: Linux 4.2.0-30-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.19.1-0ubuntu5
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sat Mar 12 21:35:07 2016
InstallationDate: Installed on 2014-10-22 (507 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS "Trusty Tahr" - Release amd64 (20140722.2)
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_CA:en
 TERM=xterm-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_CA.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: tzdata
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to xenial on 2016-03-13 (0 days ago)

[iMac (imac-netstatz)]

So,

I have no idea what happened; manual setting of localtime to UTC (command below) fixed the configuration of the package, allowing the upgrade to continue.

Anyway, I executed the following command to set to UTC, and then proceeded to complete the dist-upgrade from 15.05, and the error from tzdata was resolved; I'll fix my timezone after the upgrade completes.

#ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/UTC /etc/localtime

[iMac (imac-netstatz)]

Below is the output after I made the change and continued the 16.04 dist-upgrade process.

820 upgraded, 17 newly installed, 3 to remove and 144 not upgraded.
215 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0 B/494 MB of archives.
After this operation, 142 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]
Extracting templates from packages: 100%
Preconfiguring packages ...
Setting up tzdata (2016a-1) ...

Current default time zone: 'Etc/UTC'
Local time is now: Sun Mar 13 02:49:09 UTC 2016.
Universal Time is now: Sun Mar 13 02:49:09 UTC 2016.
Run 'dpkg-reconfigure tzdata' if you wish to change it.

(Reading database ... 398777 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../python-cairo_1.8.8-2_amd64.deb ...

[Vladimir Skubriev (v-skubriev)]

I faced same problem with latest xenial build in lxd.

lxc init 7e745cf3a3a7 xenial
lxc start xenial
lxc exec xenial -- /bin/bash

root@xenial# echo 'Europe/Moscow' > /etc/timezone
root@xenial# dpkg-reconfigure -f noninteractive tzdata
root@xenial# cat /etc/timezone
Etc/UTC

And nothing will be happened. Timezone is not changed.

I suppose that it is a tzdata package bug in 16.04.

[Benjamin Drung (bdrung)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Sadly I found no error message in the provided log that could explain the exit status of 1, but this could be a duplicate of bug #1672111. I am marking it as duplicate in that assumption.