[14.04 installer] Can't specify Montreal timezone (and possibly others)

[Fabián Rodríguez]

At installation time, the Ubuntu Gnome (and probably others) installer offers a world map to choose the time zone.

Montreal can't be chosen as usual, entering it manually shows a possible match for "Mont-real" (?) but it can't be chosen either. Screenshot attached.

Edit (not by original bug reporter):

When offline, without internet connectivity provided, we only ship zone.tab file to access unique set of timezones which are not per city/country/region, but rather per unique timezone (that is offsets & summer/winter time shifts).

In 2013h release, tzdata upstream consolidated "America/Montreal" & "America/Toronto" into a single entry to cover both Ontario & Quebec. Thus all systems that ship up to date zone.tab file only, from tzdata package, no longer have a distinct entry for Montreal, instead it's this new Eastern Time joined entry.

[Fabián Rodríguez (magicfab)]

Apprently this a result of TZ data having moved Montreal to Toronto:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-geonames/+bug/1239127/comments/4

Good luck asking francophones in Quebec to intuitively choose Toronto as their home timezone!

[AO (aofrl10n)]

This has also been reported in bug #1260972 but Dimitri John Ledkov has decided that this did not need to be fixed. I've asked him to look at it again.

[AO (aofrl10n)]

I contacted Paul Eggert the TZ maintainer and he answered yestarday:

"$ TZ=America/Montreal date; TZ=America/Toronto date; date -u
Wed Nov 5 03:15:48 EST 2014
Wed Nov 5 03:15:48 EST 2014
Wed Nov 5 08:15:48 UTC 2014

So I don't see the problem in the tz database itself. Perhaps there is an Ubuntu packaging issue, but that's something you'll have to take up with the Ubuntu folks."

So the problem is NOT coming from TZ/upstream. Dimitri please reinstate Montreal as it used to, the implemented change/deletion just as no reason to be.

[Dimitri John Ledkov (xnox)]

On 5 November 2014 19:54, Ubuntu-QC-1 <email address hidden> wrote:
> I contacted Paul Eggert the TZ maintainer and he answered yestarday:
>
> "$ TZ=America/Montreal date; TZ=America/Toronto date; date -u
> Wed Nov 5 03:15:48 EST 2014
> Wed Nov 5 03:15:48 EST 2014
> Wed Nov 5 08:15:48 UTC 2014
>
> So I don't see the problem in the tz database itself. Perhaps there is
> an Ubuntu packaging issue, but that's something you'll have to take up
> with the Ubuntu folks."
>
> So the problem is NOT coming from TZ/upstream. Dimitri please reinstate
> Montreal as it used to, the implemented change/deletion just as no
> reason to be.
>

Given that both are the same time, what's the functional problem with
selecting Toronto?
Other than ideological / political?

When one is offline we use zone.tab to provide a list of unique timezones.
Upstream does change zone.tab frequently.

In 2013h release America/Montreal was removed from the zone.tab file upstream
http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-branches/ubuntu/vivid/tzdata/vivid/revision/103

It is still a valid timezone, but it's not a unique one. Notice how
the timezone was renamed upstream as well:

"America/Toronto Eastern Time - Ontario - most locations"
became
"America/Toronto Eastern Time - Ontario & Quebec - most locations"

Thus in minimal environment (no internet connection established to
geoip & timezone ubuntu providers) we only use zone.tab, which since
2013 lists "America/Toronto Eastern Time - Ontario & Quebec - most
locations" as the timezone one should use for Montreal.

If you wish to dispute this, please request tzdata upstream to put
Montreal back into zone.tab. (but I daubt that will happen, since it's
redundant data)

--
Regards,

Dimitri.

[Brandon Nolet (bnolet)]

This is still an issue and I don't agree with the won't fix. Yes it may be the same as Toronto's timezone however in most other systems, Montreal is a properly selectable option. The option "mont-real" should either be fixed or removed.