Time zone changes on every boot

[Sareen Shah]

I'm using Hardy Heron Beta

Not sure when this started happening, but everytime I reboot my computer, the time zone changes to a wrong one, and I have to change the time zone manually.

My real time zone is America/Chicago. But on every reboot, it changes to America/Indiana/Vincennes. I think Indiana has a weird system for time zones, so some counties have one system and other counties have another, but unfortunately this particular location places me an hour ahead of what the time should be.

I also had another issue related w/ the system time at this thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=738681 . But that was solved w/ a reboot. Just mentioning it in case there's some overlap.

[Chad Waters (chad)]

Assigned to gnome-panel per reporter at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=740510

[Chad Waters (chad)]

Sorry, I meant gnome-system-tools

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

May you tell us some easy steps in order to reproduce the behavior? thanks.

[Sareen Shah (sareen-eng)]

It only happens when I reboot, that's the only way I can reproduce the behavior. Obviously that isn't much help for you, but I'm not sure what other information I can give.

Result of "date" on startup:
Wed Apr 2 15:39:54 EDT 2008

Then I go to System > Administration > Time & Date > Unlock

Then I click on the Time Zone box and click on they city of Chicago (it was set to Indiana/Vincennes). Configuration is set to "Manual" (as opposed to "Keep Synchronized")

Result of "date" afterwards:
Wed Apr 2 14:42:45 CDT 2008

Also, sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata doesn't solve the problem

[Sareen Shah (sareen-eng)]

OK, I've found some weird stuff w/ this problem.

So I log in, and see that the time-zone changes. I go ahead and change it back to America/Chicago.

If I log out, and press Ctrl-Alt-F1 to go to a console and type in "date", it shows me CDT as it should (so the problem doesn't happen on logging out, it's on logging in).

If I log out, and log back in to my same user name (note: I'm not restarting the computer here), I see that the time zone is incorrect again.

However, if I log out of my normal user name "sareen", and log into another account that I created: "guest", the time zone remains as America/Chicago as it should.

If I log out of my normal user name "sareen", and log back into "sareen," then something a bit strange happens. If immediately upon entering my password I press Ctrl-Alt-F1 and go to console, then wait for a few seconds and press Ctrl-Alt-F7 when everything is loaded up in X, then the time zone is America/Chicago as it should be!

So I think it's related to another problem I've been having which I haven't reported yet because I was trying to figure it out a bit. Everytime I log in, gnome-panel crashes with an error similar to https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-panel/+bug/200881

The title of that one is: [hardy] gnome-panel crashed with SIGSEV in clock_map_place_locations at clock-map.c:432
The title of mine would've been (based on Apport): gnome-panel crashed with SIGSEGV in clock_map_refresh()

The difference is that they go through the calendar/clock applet to reproduce the crash, mine happens whenever I log in to "sareen" (but never when I log into "guest")

Unfortunately I did not report it, and the dialog which kept asking me to "Report the problem..." is not showing up anymore, even though gnome-panel seems to still be crashing upon login (it appears, disappears, then re-appears). I guess because I had hit "Report the problem..." before but didn't continue on with it. If anyone knows how I can bring that dialog back, I'll report the problem this time and link to that bug report so you can see the automatically generated info.

Then again, I don't know if it still is crashing in the background when I go to Ctrl-Alt-F1 immediately, so that may just be a red herring.

[Adam Klobukowski (adamklobukowski)]

I have the same problem. I run daily updated Hardy Heron. I live in Europe/Warsaw timezone, but some time ago it changed (by itself) to Europe/Kaliningrad. /etc/timezone still reflects Europe/Warsaw, but /etc/localtime reflects Europe/Kaliningrad. I manually copied correct file to /etc/localtime, but it reverted to Europe/Kaliningrad after reboot.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

seems to be rather a clock applet issue

[Christer Edwards (christer.edwards)]

I have a similar issue, but I've changed my time with time-admin via the system menu.

I travel quite a bit and I change my system time zone when I arrive in a new location. The time updates promptly when I change it, but after a reboot (ie; shutting down the laptop between the office and hotel) it reverts to my original time zone.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

do you still get the issue using the current hardy version? what do you have in /etc/timezone and what timezones are configured?

[Sareen Shah (sareen-eng)]

As far as I can tell, the bug has been fixed (for the past couple of weeks probably)

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

closing the bug since that works correctly now

[newuser (16b)]

Weird stuff about this bug!
My timezone is Europe/Rome. After every reboot, if I check about right click on date&time in the panel, Preferences -> Clock preferences -> Locations -> I select my location -> edit I can see a different timezone, everytime America/Asuncion.
But if I left click on date&time in the panel and click on Locations below the location is correct!
In other words.. locations doesn't change if I check it from the date&time below, but it changes in America/Asuncion every reboot in the locations settings!
Why that? It's a problem?