Bug#688318: tzdata packages updates consistently cause /etc/timezone to be reset to an undesirable value
Package: tzdata
Version: 2012e-0ubuntu0.12.04.1
Severity: important
Dear Maintainer,
Every time an update to the tzdata package is published, it results in my /etc/timezone being reset from
"US/Central" to "America/Chicago". While technically America/Chicago is indeed the same timezone, it is
unintuitive to say the least considering the fact that I live 929 miles (~1500 km) from Chicago, Illinois.
Despite me generating this report against an Ubuntu specific package, the behavior is present in the current
tzdata package in Debian 6.0.5.
I'd like to suggest that tzdata package updates should not overwrite /etc/timezone unless there is a
*critical* need to do so.
Steps to reproduce:
1) Execute dpkg-reconfigure tzdata and set timezone to "US/Central"
2) Verify that /etc/timezone contains "US/Central"
3) Force reinstall of tzdata via aptitude reinstall tzdata (or wait until a regular tzdata update is published)
4) Notice that dpkg-reconfigure informs you that the default timezone "America/Chicago" has been selected
and helpfully suggests running dpkg-reconfigure tzdata if a different timezone is desired.
5) Verify that /etc/timezone now contains "America/Chicago"
I can't help but notice that this issue has been around for quite some time and has resulted in at least
one pretty humurous bug report filed against a downstream distribution:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/tzdata/+bug/772024
However, despite that downstream bug report being over a year old and an open Debian bug that seems to describe
the issue being over two years old there seems to have been no movement on the issue.
I'm going to assume that part of the problem is that the downstream bug report was never properly introduced
into the Debian bugtracking system and that the necessary information didn't exist where a Debian maintainer
could easily reproduce and fix the underlying issue.
Hopefully, the steps I've outlined above will help solve that part of the problem. Please let me know if
there is anything else that I can do to assist.
Shelby Cain
-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
APT prefers precise-updates
APT policy: (500, 'precise-updates'), (500, 'precise-security'), (500, 'precise'), (100, 'precise-backports')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-30-generic (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/dash
Versions of packages tzdata depends on:
ii debconf [debconf-2.0] 1.5.42ubuntu1
tzdata recommends no packages.
tzdata suggests no packages.
-- debconf information:
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:
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