Comment 0 for bug 772024

Binary package hint: tzdata

Other than the fact that Chicago, Illinois is in US Central Timezone, I have no relationship to Chicago. I am not in Chicago. I do not want to be in Chicago. I am in the Central Timezone. I am physically closer to other cities mentioned in tzdata. Selecting America/Chicago versus US/Central is not easier for me nor is it more intuitive. I understand that the upstream tzdata package goes a long way in documenting all of the weirdness associated with timezones and different localities' treatment of timezones and daylight "savings" time. However, from an end-user perspective, the distribution should place no special importance or preference on one timezone specification or another. Likewise, if a user chooses a timezone, the system should never change it.

To reproduce the issue:

# Manually select US/Central
me@ubuntu:~$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata
[sudo] password for me:

Current default time zone: 'US/Central'
Local time is now: Wed Apr 27 16:05:02 CDT 2011.
Universal Time is now: Wed Apr 27 21:05:02 UTC 2011.

# Validation that selection was accepted
me@ubuntu:~$ cat /etc/timezone
US/Central

me@ubuntu:~$ md5sum /etc/localtime /usr/share/zoneinfo/US/Central
6540624294b1193e22ed7a15692f2de7 /etc/localtime
6540624294b1193e22ed7a15692f2de7 /usr/share/zoneinfo/US/Central

me@ubuntu:~$ debconf-show tzdata
debconf: DbDriver "passwords" warning: could not open /var/cache/debconf/passwords.dat: Permission denied
  tzdata/Zones/Australia:
* tzdata/Zones/US: Central
  tzdata/Zones/Asia:
* tzdata/Zones/Etc: UTC
  tzdata/Zones/SystemV:
  tzdata/Zones/Arctic:
  tzdata/Zones/Pacific:
  tzdata/Zones/Antarctica:
  tzdata/Zones/Europe:
  tzdata/Zones/Africa:
* tzdata/Zones/America: Chicago
* tzdata/Areas: US
  tzdata/Zones/Atlantic:
  tzdata/Zones/Indian:

# Force the package to reinstall
me@ubuntu:~$ aptitude reinstall tzdata
The following packages will be REINSTALLED:
  tzdata
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 reinstalled, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B/658 kB of archives. After unpacking 0 B will be used.
Preconfiguring packages ...
(Reading database ... 168356 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace tzdata 2011g-0ubuntu0.11.04 (using .../tzdata_2011g-0ubuntu0.11.04_all.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement tzdata ...
Setting up tzdata (2011g-0ubuntu0.11.04) ...

Current default time zone: 'America/Chicago'
Local time is now: Wed Apr 27 16:05:22 CDT 2011.
Universal Time is now: Wed Apr 27 21:05:22 UTC 2011.
Run 'dpkg-reconfigure tzdata' if you wish to change it.

# Now previous indicators are reset to America/Chicago instead of US/Central

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: tzdata 2011g-0ubuntu0.11.04
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-8.42-generic 2.6.38.2
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-8-generic x86_64
Architecture: amd64
Date: Wed Apr 27 15:54:33 2011
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" - Release amd64 (20101007)
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 LANGUAGE=en_US:en
SourcePackage: tzdata
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to natty on 2011-04-10 (17 days ago)