Bug#605834: tzdata update stomps preseeded timezone (breaks Oracle connections)
Package: tzdata
Version: 2010o-0lenny1
Severity: important
Our 2000+ servers are preseeded to UTC during auto-installs via
d-i time/zone string UTC
But when the tzdata package is updated, and our development servers
auto-update, tzdata's config script stomps on the d-i preseeded value
of "UTC", tragically changing it to "Etc/UTC" in /etc/timezone :
This has the unfortunate side effect of killing all subsequent connections
to our databases due to an Java vs. Oracle bug (irony alert) :
http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=958265
Java's Timezone.getDefaultTimezone() returns 'Etc/UTC', and
this is apparently not a valid timezone in Oracle. ...
But I still think this is abug in Oracle's Timezone data, as
'Etc/UTC' is indeed a valid timezone ID.
On our killed clients, and in the ( http://squirrel-sql.sourceforge.net/ )
squirrel-sql UI, this manifests as
configdb: ORA-00604: error occurred at recursive SQL level 1
ORA-01882: timezone region not found
Had this happened in our production environment, it would have killed the site,
which I'm told is a Very Bad Thing (TM) in some circles. As it was, it caused
lots of testing to abort, and made for a bad day for me.
I'd posit that the tzdata config script should respect d-i preseeded (or
manually set) choices of timezone, as long as the timezone is valid/exists.
Secondarily, it should be able to represent all available timezone choices
(eg; UTC vs Etc/UTC).
If I get a chance this weekend I'll take a stab at a patch, but I at
least need to get the issue on the radar now.
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 5.0.6
APT prefers stable
APT policy: (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-2-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Versions of packages tzdata depends on:
ii debconf [debconf-2.0] 1.5.24 Debian configuration management sy
tzdata recommends no packages.
tzdata suggests no packages.
-- debconf information:
tzdata/Zones/Australia:
tzdata/Zones/Asia:
tzdata/Zones/SystemV:
tzdata/Zones/Pacific:
tzdata/Zones/Atlantic:
* tzdata/Zones/Etc: GMT
tzdata/Zones/Arctic:
tzdata/Zones/Antarctica:
tzdata/Zones/Europe:
tzdata/Zones/Africa:
* tzdata/Zones/America: Denver
* tzdata/Areas: America
tzdata/Zones/Indian:
Reply to: