/etc/timezone does not exist

[Robert Collins]

/etc/localtime is not a symlink to handle /usr being on a different
partition to /; however when the tzdata for the current timezone changes
this file needs to be updated.

 affects ubuntu/tzdata
 subscribe vorlon
--
GPG key available at: <http://www.robertcollins.net/keys.txt>.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

I have not been able to reproduce this bug using a feisty liveCD. The livefs lacks an /etc/timezone file, but it's correctly created on install by ubiquity, and remains intact across a reboot.

This is of course a serious bug, but if I can't reproduce it I can't fix it properly without risk of regressing other systems where users have removed /etc/timezone by choice.

[Dennis Kaarsemaker (dennis)]

I have a nice toy system to trash. Will test thursday

[Dennis Kaarsemaker (dennis)]

Timezone selected: Europe/Amsterdam
Language selected: dutch
Not connected to the internet, langpack install fails.

Other than that, fairly standard.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

If I read /var/lib/dpkg/info/tzdata.postinst correctly, /etc/localtime is always updated whenever the package is configured (i. e. on updates), unless debconf values point to a custom or invalid setting. How can this be reproduced? What does /etc/timezone say for you?

[Robert Collins (lifeless)]

On Tue, 2008-04-01 at 19:54 +0000, Martin Pitt wrote:
> If I read /var/lib/dpkg/info/tzdata.postinst correctly, /etc/localtime
> is always updated whenever the package is configured (i. e. on updates),
> unless debconf values point to a custom or invalid setting. How can this
> be reproduced? What does /etc/timezone say for you?

Well, I have 'fixed' my machine now, so it now has /etc/timezone. When
the problem arose I had no /etc/timezone.

-Rob
--
GPG key available at: <http://www.robertcollins.net/keys.txt>.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Thanks, Robert. Without /etc/timezone there is no way how /etc/localtime should get updated, of course.

So I guess the question is now how you ended up without /etc/timezone? Do you have any idea? Was this an upgrade from a previous release? Thanks!

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Downgrading severity accordingly, since this is a very unusual condition.

[Robert Collins (lifeless)]

On Tue, 2008-04-01 at 21:51 +0000, Martin Pitt wrote:
> Thanks, Robert. Without /etc/timezone there is no way how /etc/localtime
> should get updated, of course.
>
> So I guess the question is now how you ended up without /etc/timezone?
> Do you have any idea? Was this an upgrade from a previous release?
> Thanks!

I don't know how I ended up in this situation; I know at least one other
sydneysider ended up with this situation...

-Rob
--
GPG key available at: <http://www.robertcollins.net/keys.txt>.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Robert, we do need to know at least whether this was an upgrade, and if so from which release, so that we can at least have some basic idea of where to start investigating.

At least in Dennis' case, we're pretty confident that the installer did create /etc/timezone, but something seems to have removed it later. This could e.g. be a broken maintainer script on upgrade, or it could be a desktop configuration utility, or something else. We need your help to limit the scope of this somewhat.

[Robert Collins (lifeless)]

On Tue, 2008-04-01 at 23:02 +0000, Colin Watson wrote:
> Robert, we do need to know at least whether this was an upgrade, and if
> so from which release, so that we can at least have some basic idea of
> where to start investigating.

I installed this machine somewhat haphazardly, it was having boot
problems from the amd64 cd's. I am *fairly* sure it was feisty liveCD
that I finally got it up and running from. I'm running a crypted
environment, which ubiquity doesn't natively support, so I partitioned
manually and installed onto that. I think.

> At least in Dennis' case, we're pretty confident that the installer did
> create /etc/timezone, but something seems to have removed it later. This
> could e.g. be a broken maintainer script on upgrade, or it could be a
> desktop configuration utility, or something else. We need your help to
> limit the scope of this somewhat.

Sure. Are there any log files that might record this information?

-Rob

--
GPG key available at: <http://www.robertcollins.net/keys.txt>.

[Martin Pool (mbp)]

I also encountered this, on an i386 machine that was freshly installed from a feisty cd last year, then upgraded to gutsy and then to hardy in the usual way. It's a desktop machine so I have probably never changed the timezone since it was installed.

I have dpkg.log going back to at least May 2007.

Quite a few people in NSW have hit this it seems.

Note that despite Robert's initial comment, after reconfiguring the package localtime is in fact a symlink.

[Martin Pool (mbp)]

Correction: dpkg-reconfigure does not make a symlink, but the Gnome time and date panel does.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

The time and date panel has been fixed with the upload of system-tools-backends 2.6.0-0ubuntu6, and will now create a copy instead of a symlink.

I don't have any reason to believe this is connected to the bug of /etc/localtime existing without /etc/timezone.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

I would also note that there probably isn't any particular correlation with NSW, beyond the fact that NSW has just gone through a DST change under a new set of DST rules, so this is the precise set of people who are going to be noticing the problem right now.

[Martin Pool (mbp)]

On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 5:03 PM, Steve Langasek
<email address hidden> wrote:
> I would also note that there probably isn't any particular correlation
> with NSW, beyond the fact that NSW has just gone through a DST change
> under a new set of DST rules, so this is the precise set of people who
> are going to be noticing the problem right now.

I agree.

--
Martin <http://launchpad.net/~mbp/>

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

FYI, I've now done an upgrade of a system from edgy->feisty->gutsy->hardy, and at no point did /etc/timezone disappear. Given that /etc/timezone has been present out-of-the-box since at least edgy, and all of the relevant maintainer scripts handle it correctly, this bug basically requires some package or script to have gone out of its way to remove the file; so I'm at a loss on how to proceed here.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

Unable to reproduce, no new information in > 1year; closing invalid to knock this off the list. Please reopen if more info becomes available.