time-admin shows different time zone when it is restarted

[Ante Karamatić]

Binary package hint: gnome-system-tools

Reproduceable in releases:
- Intrepid Ibex 8.10

Latest tested version:
$ apt-cache policy gnome-system-tools gnome-about
gnome-system-tools:
  Installed: 2.22.1-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 2.22.1-0ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 2.22.1-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com intrepid/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
gnome-about:
  Installed: 1:2.24.0-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 1:2.24.0-0ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 1:2.24.0-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com intrepid/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

If you choose Europe/Zagreb, Europe/Ljubljana, Europe/Belgrade, Europe/Sarajevo or Europe/Skopje, every time you restart time-admin it will show Europe/Sarajevo.

If Europe/Zagreb is placed in front of Europe/Sarajevo in /usr/share/zoneinfo/zone.tab, then Europe/Zagreb will apear every time. If one chooses Europe/Vienna, one will get Europe/Vinnea on restart.

My guess is that problems lies in locales package (langpack-locales source), where all this towns are linked to Belgrade (europe file in tzdata2006e.tar.gz or tzdata2006f.tar.gz; available in langpack-locales source).

Same thing happens with Europe/Bratislava (changed to Europe/Prague after restart).

This is cause all these citys were in one country before (Belgrade, Ljubljana, Sarajevo, Skopje and Zagreb in Yugoslavia and Bratislava and Prague in Czechoslovakia). But those countrys fall apart 16 years ago.

This bug exsist for 16 years. Please fix :)

[Ante Karamatić (ivoks)]

Reporting that this is fixed in latest tzdata in Feisty (2007e-0ubuntu0.7.04).

Thank you!

[Pavol Klačanský (pavolzetor-deactivatedaccount)]

this bug is occured in intrepid ibex
when i set europe/Bratislava, close, open window, then time zone is Europe/Prague

[Savvas Radevic (medigeek)]

I can confirm that this bug exists (again) in Intrepid Ibex:

$ apt-cache policy gnome-system-tools
gnome-system-tools:
  Installed: 2.22.0-1ubuntu2
  Candidate: 2.22.0-1ubuntu2
  Version table:
 *** 2.22.0-1ubuntu2 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com intrepid/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

Steps to reproduce:
System > Administration > Time and Date > Change to Europe/Belgrade
close Time and Date and open it again: time zone: Europe/Sarajevo

time-admin in terminal doesn't show anything in particular to the problem:
$ time-admin
(time-admin:26089): Gtk-WARNING **: Unsupported tag for GtkWidget: atkproperty
(time-admin:26089): Gtk-WARNING **: Unsupported tag for GtkWidget: atkproperty
(time-admin:26089): Gtk-WARNING **: Unknown property: GtkCalendar.display-options

[Didier Roche-Tolomelli (didrocks)]

Thanks for reporting this bug and make ubuntu better

There is on new version of gnome-system-tools at the moment (2.22.1). I will update it soon. But regarding of the news file (http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/gnome-system-tools/2.22/gnome-system-tools-2.22.1.news), this will not fix this issue.

After some investigation, this problem seems to not be in gnome-control-center package but in tzdata one (cf details of the bug).
Please link this bug to tzdata package as well.

[Savvas Radevic (medigeek)]

This is weird:
a) tzdata shows the correct timezone (Europe/Belgrade)
b) time-admin (see attached screenshot) still shows Europe/Sarajevo instead of the chosen Europe/Belgrade.

$ sudo dpkg -i --force-overwrite tzdata_2008h-2ubuntu1_all.deb
(Reading database ... 152581 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace tzdata 2008h-2ubuntu1 (using tzdata_2008h-2ubuntu1_all.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement tzdata ...
Setting up tzdata (2008h-2ubuntu1) ...

Current default timezone: 'Europe/Belgrade'
Local time is now: Fri Nov 7 18:03:46 CET 2008.
Universal Time is now: Fri Nov 7 17:03:46 UTC 2008.
Run 'dpkg-reconfigure tzdata' if you wish to change it.

$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

Current default timezone: 'Europe/Belgrade'
Local time is now: Fri Nov 7 18:04:08 CET 2008.
Universal Time is now: Fri Nov 7 17:04:08 UTC 2008.

[Savvas Radevic (medigeek)]

I think I know what the problem is:
A lot of timezone files in /usr/share/zoneinfo/ are the same and probably tz commands can't figure which country is which.

In my case:
$ md5sum /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Belgrade
226ad0c2724b4674d6a9206a43661ff9 /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Belgrade

$ md5sum /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Sarajevo
226ad0c2724b4674d6a9206a43661ff9 /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Sarajevo

$ md5sum /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/* | grep 226ad0c2724b4674d6a9206a43661ff9
226ad0c2724b4674d6a9206a43661ff9 /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Belgrade
226ad0c2724b4674d6a9206a43661ff9 /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Ljubljana
226ad0c2724b4674d6a9206a43661ff9 /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Podgorica
226ad0c2724b4674d6a9206a43661ff9 /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Sarajevo
226ad0c2724b4674d6a9206a43661ff9 /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Skopje
226ad0c2724b4674d6a9206a43661ff9 /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Zagreb

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Yes, cities with the same time zone are hardlinked together. THey are being made available under different names, so that they are easier to find for an user. Or are you saying that the duplicates actually have different time zones?

If they are indeed the same, then this is just a g-s-t bug, since with the tzdata package itself, as well as glibc, gnome-panel, etc. it works fine.

[Savvas Radevic (medigeek)]

> Or are you saying that the duplicates actually have
> different time zones?
I didn't know they are hardlinked for that reason, it's probably gst's
fault not being able to see the difference.. I have no idea :)

> If they are indeed the same, then this is just a g-s-t bug, since with
> the tzdata package itself, as well as glibc, gnome-panel, etc. it works
> fine.

It's probably just gst, since there was a fix provided for it in an
earlier version of gnome. Can someone notify upstream to set the bug
back to confirmed? Or should I file a new bug about it?

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

I reopened it upstream. Can you please discuss it directly with upstream there, as you already started? Thanks!

[Savvas Radevic (medigeek)]

Woohoo! The patch mentioned on the upstream bug is working! I can now see "Europe/Belgrade" instead of the wrong "Europe/Sarajevo":
http://img50.imageshack.us/img50/7452/screenshottimeanddatese.png

$ date -R
Wed, 29 Apr 2009 17:44:44 +0200

I changed it a bit for jaunty 9.04.

[Savvas Radevic (medigeek)]

If you want to try it out on ubuntu 9.04 (jaunty jackalope) execute these in terminal:

sudo cp /usr/share/system-tools-backends-2.0/scripts/Time/TimeDate.pm /usr/share/system-tools-backends-2.0/scripts/Time/TimeDate.pm.backup
sudo wget http://launchpadlibrarian.net/26144135/TimeDate.pm -O /usr/share/system-tools-backends-2.0/scripts/Time/TimeDate.pm

[Michael Terry (mterry)]

Thanks, Savvas for reminding me that I hadn't yet provided an Ubuntu patch. Savvas also discovered that upstream is unmaintained, so if we want this, we ought to put it in ourselves until upstream wakes up.

I'm attaching a debdiff for Karmic. Too bad I didn't get this in for Jaunty.

[Savvas Radevic (medigeek)]

Actually, I think it's better this way, it gives us enough time to study over the changes from debian and create a good merge. :)
This is the current Debian package:

" system-tools-backends (2.6.0-6) unstable; urgency=low

   * 01_debian_4.0.patch: completely remove all the brain-dead version
     logic. The Debian version corresponds to the version the package is
     shipped in, that’s all.
"

The versioning system ("debian-3.0") has been replaced with "debian" in the patch, maybe that's not good for upstream, but it does seem appropriate for downstream.

Perhaps we could file a bug to Debian, wait for them to accept and create a merge afterwards? Thoughts?

[Michael Terry (mterry)]

I filed bug http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=526940 in Debian, with a simpler patch (simpler because as you mentioned, Savvas, they simplified the Debian logic).

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package system-tools-backends - 2.6.0-6ubuntu1

---------------
system-tools-backends (2.6.0-6ubuntu1) karmic; urgency=low

  * Merge with Debian unstable; Remaining Ubuntu changes:
    - Some patches, see their tag headers for details:
      + 00git-format-strings.patch
      + 00git-policy-i18n.patch
      + 08_rosetta_translations.patch
      + 61_cleanup-pid-file.patch
      + 99_autoreconf.patch (for the changes in 00git-policy-i18n.patch)
      + Drop 60_fix-permissions-of-pid-file.patch, superseded by
        00git-format-strings.patch.
  * Debian's cleanup of 01_debian_4.0.patch also fixed operation for Karmic.
    (LP: #371234)
  * Add 06_check_etc_timezone.patch: Check /etc/timezone instead of
    /etc/localtime, to fix zones being misreported as some other zone. Thanks,
    Michael Terry! (LP: #43644)

system-tools-backends (2.6.0-6) unstable; urgency=low

  * 01_debian_4.0.patch: completely remove all the brain-dead version
    logic. The Debian version corresponds to the version the package is
    shipped in, that’s all.
  * Standards version is 3.8.1.
  * Point to versioned GPL in the copyright.

system-tools-backends (2.6.0-5) unstable; urgency=low

  [ Michael Biebl ]
  * debian/control{.in}
    - Add Vcs-* fields.
    - Add Homepage field.
    - Add dependency on dbus (>= 1.1.2) which is required for D-Bus system bus
      activation (i.e. start-on-demand).

  [ Josselin Mouette ]
  * Remove dependency on adduser. Closes: #519366.
  * 01_debian_4.0.patch: update for the new string in
    /etc/debian_version. Closes: #519773.
    + Make it also understand 6.0 in preparation for squeeze.

system-tools-backends (2.6.0-4) unstable; urgency=low

  * 05_cve_2008_4311.patch: new patch, based on the patch by Simon
    McVittie for the lenny Branch. Specify permissions with
    send_destination instead of send_interface. Makes backends work with
    the dbus packages fixing CVE-2008-4311. Closes: #510744.

system-tools-backends (2.6.0-3) experimental; urgency=low

  [ Loic Minier ]
  * Don't rm_conffile /etc/dbus-1/event.d/70system-tools-backends during first
    configuration.

  [ Josselin Mouette ]
  * Build-depend on libpolkit-dbus-dev for PolicyKit support.
  * Make other build-dependencies up-to-date.
  * Break gnome-system-tools < 2.22.1-1.
  * 03_default_permissions.patch: removed, useless with PolicyKit.
  * Install the policy.
  * Remove the init script, the dispatcher is correctly started on
    demand in the PolicyKit-enabled code path. Closes: #423903.
  * Remove the init script and symbolic links in the preinst.
  * system-tools-backends.1: fix typo. Closes: #482198.
  * system-tools-backends.postinst: removed, we don’t need stb-admin
    anymore and we don’t need to reload dbus to make it start the
    daemon.
  * Don’t pass --with-stb-group to the configure flags.

 -- Martin Pitt <email address hidden> Wed, 06 May 2009 11:03:50 +0200