Clock applet consistently displays different timezone after reboot

[BlackAdder]

Binary package hint: gnome-panel

I entered my physical location in the clock applet (version 2.22.1.2):

Location Name: Gent
Timezone: Europe/Brussels
Latitude: 51.0854 North
Longitude: 3.7175 East

Shut down computer, restart 2 days later, the timezone is changed to "America/El Salvador".
Repeatable bug/problem. Strange thing is also, that after clicking the "Edit" button under the calender, I find the text "Gent Europe/Brussels" in the Locations tab, but when selecting this (sole) entry and then clicking "Edit", I get the "America/El Salvador" timezone in the title-less dialog that pops up....
BTW: I have to scroll down the list of timezones to (in my case) Europe/Brussels...

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

thank you for your bug report, what timezone is set in /etc/timezone? could you try using the hardy update new version?

[urho (vonturha)]

I have notice this too, sometimes after boot my time zone has changed from Europe/ Helsinki to America/Davenport (or something like that).my /etc/timezone shows 'Europe/Helsinki'

i am using clock applet version 2.22.1.3

[urho (vonturha)]

ok, it did it again, my /etc/timezone shows 'Europe/Helsinki' but preferences -> edit shows 'timezone: America/Danmarkshavn'

[BlackAdder (jan-doornaert)]

Sebastien,

Sorry for the delay in answering. My /etc/timezone file just contains the line "Europe/Brussels" (the timezone I selected at install time, I suppose).

And yes, tonight the timezone in the locations was yet again reset to America/El Salvador. Spooky.

I'm currently installing the updates as available tonight - I'll let you know if the clock/location applet got patched too, and if this fixes the issue (from urho's feedback, I guess version 2.22.1.3 still seems to be bugged with it). Could take a few days, though.

Anyway, thanks for tracking this issue!

[urho (vonturha)]

I just realised that when my wireless connection fails to connect at boot ( which is fairly often with current network manager, about 95% of times) then my time zone settings gets re setted

[BlackAdder (jan-doornaert)]

After booting up my PC tonight, the timezone was once more reset to America/El Savador (applet version 2.22.1.3).
Reset it to Europe/Brussels, restarted - and back to El Salvador we go 8-(
Seems like the applet does not save the set timezone correctly and/or cannot (re)determine it from /etc/timezone...
Remark: this is a Hardy beta having been upgraded to Hardy "official". And it is connected to the net by wire (firewall with dhcp).

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering is this still an issue for you? Thanks in advance.

[BlackAdder (jan-doornaert)]

To check this, I had to recover the computer exhibiting this problem from - ahem - cold storage.
First boot showed the timezone to be "America/El Salvador" again - I reset it to "Europe/Brussels".

I then proceeded to install 350+ updates (about 4 months worth) - I noticed that gnome-applets was also included, and the clock applet got upgraded to version 2.22.2, as I discovered later. This took the better part of last night.

I shut down the PC this morning (after all updates were installed), and brought it back up in the evening - only to find the timezone to have been reset to "America/El Salvador".

Still an issue, but I can live with it ;-)

BTW: Probably not relevant, but my time servers have always been "be.pool.ntp.org", "europe.pool.ntp.org" and "ntp.ubuntu.com", in that order.

[Ilja (ilja-honkonen)]

This is still an issue for me and the wrong timezone displays even if I set it to Europe/Helsinki and then close and reopen the Time and Date settings window. The wrong timezone (Europe/Mariehamn) is also displayed after these:

cat /etc/timezone
Europe/Helsinki

sudo cp -v --remove-destination /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Helsinki /etc/localtime
removed `/etc/localtime'
`/usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Helsinki' -> `/etc/localtime'

Naturally the wrong timezone is also shown if I open the time and date settings through System, Administration, date & time.

[Ilja (ilja-honkonen)]

Forgot to mention, my system is an updated Ubuntu 8.04 and the clock applet is 2.22.2. Don't know how to check the version of the date and time settings program.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

does anybody still get the issue in intrepid? could you describe steps to trigger the bug on a new installation?

[BlackAdder (jan-doornaert)]

Steps to trigger: install, reboot, configure timezone, shutdown (leave it that way for a day or so) and... tada! There it is!

Anyway, one of these days, I'm going to reinstall the machine on which I have the problem (looking for a 10+ GiB disk, because 2+1 GiB just won't cut it: http://users.telenet.be/janneli/jan/stuff/hardy_heron_beta_on_a_dual_PII.html).

[BlackAdder (jan-doornaert)]

Yesterday was "one of these days": found myself two "big" SCSI harddisks (4.6GB + 9.1GB) and a matching 53c825-based PCI SCSI card and installed Intrepid Ibex (aka Ubuntu 8.10 desktop edition).
Afterwards - i.e. after installing the latest patches - the version of the clock panel turned out to be 2.24.1.
I configured the ntp servers (*.be.pool.ntp.org), added my location as described above and shut the machine.
Today, upon rebooting, the time zone was still "Europe/Brussels". It would seem the problem is fixed!

[Martin Mai (mrkanister-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

This bug report is being closed due to your last comment regarding this being fixed with an update. For future reference you can manage the status of your own bugs by clicking on the current status in the yellow line and then choosing a new status in the revealed drop down box. You can learn more about bug statuses at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Status . Thank you again for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Feel free to submit any future bugs you may find.

[era (era)]

I'm still seeing this on a laptop running Jaunty. I have for a long time observed that my time zone gets reset to Europe/Mariehamn. The speculation that this might depend on access to wireless during boot might be significant sounds like it could fit my situation, too, although I have not been paying close attention to that aspect so far (I rarely reboot anyway; I'd guess this might also be related to wireless availability on wake up from suspend / hibernate as well, or instead).

Sorry, not yet prepared to offer repro steps, but I have been seeing this on multiple installations and so consistently as to believe everyone would trivially be experiencing this.

[era (era)]

Oh, my /etc/timezone says Europe/Helsinki so Mariehamn is not terribly far off.

[era (era)]

Furthermore, I was able to reproduce this in a Virtualbox Jaunty Live CD instance, even without a reboot. I set up my timezone to Europe/Helsinki, configured NTP synchronization, closed the Time and Date applet, and reopened it. Presto, Europe/Mariehamn.

[era (era)]

Actually, even without NTP in the equation at all, I see the same here. In a Jaunty Live CD instance, open Preferences > Time and Date and configure the location to Europe/Helsinki. Close Time and Date and observe that /etc/timezone has been correctly updated. Still, reopening Time and Date displays the location as Europe/Mariehamn.

[era (era)]

... and no matter how many times I try to correct it, it's reset back to Europe/Mariehamn in the Time and Date applet next time I open it (sorry, this is in System > Administration, not System > Preferences). This is consistent with what I have been observing since I think at least 8.04. Reiterate, no reboot required, so really trivial to reproduce.

[era (era)]

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=519823 has been marked as fixed, but seems to be about the same problem. Without further analysis, my guess is that the fix basically works but that there are still glitches for individuall locations, one of which apparently is Helsinki.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

The issue is an upstream one and it would be nice if somebody having it could send the bug the to the people writting the software (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream/GNOME)

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Not sure the new comments are the same issue and the bug start being confusing could you open a new bug with clear details on how to trigger the bug on jaunty?

[era (era)]

My bad, my problem is actually bug #16285. Sorry for the noise; marking this one as Fix Released, as the linked Gnome bug seems to be the one this was about all along.