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Bug 696303 - timezone setting is ignored
timezone setting is ignored
Status: RESOLVED NOTGNOME
Product: gnome-initial-setup
Classification: Applications
Component: general
0.8
Other Linux
: Normal normal
: ---
Assigned To: GNOME Initial Setup maintainer(s)
GNOME Initial Setup maintainer(s)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2013-03-21 16:16 UTC by Jeffrey Bastian
Modified: 2013-03-22 18:15 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---



Description Jeffrey Bastian 2013-03-21 16:16:50 UTC
The gnome-initial-setup wizard asks for your city so it can set a timezone, but this setting is ignored.  The new user has the same timezone as the system default.

I'm on Fedora 19 pre-release with gnome-initial-setup-0.8-3.fc19.x86_64

My system is set for US/Central time, and I created 2 new users, one for Paris, France, and another for Tokyo, Japan, and both users show US/Central time.

In fact, I don't even see a timezone setting in the AccountsService file:

[root@localhost ~]# cat /var/lib/AccountsService/users/tokyo 
[User]
Language=
XSession=
PasswordHint=[Invalid UTF-8]
Comment 1 Matthias Clasen 2013-03-22 11:51:13 UTC
we're not setting any per-user timezones in GNOME, both the control-center and the initial-setup should set the system-wide timezone.
Comment 2 Jeffrey Bastian 2013-03-22 12:55:52 UTC
Oh, it's supposed to be system-wide?  Well, that didn't work either.  As I mentioned, I tried initial-setup twice, once with Paris and once with Tokyo, but my system is still US Central:

$ md5sum /etc/localtime /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Chicago
d0f076c9f390e7d8a933cc7cc1ad2e90  /etc/localtime
d0f076c9f390e7d8a933cc7cc1ad2e90  /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Chicago
Comment 3 Jasper St. Pierre (not reading bugmail) 2013-03-22 17:01:37 UTC
Does calling "$ timedatectl set-timezone Asia/Tokyo" work for you?
Comment 4 Jeffrey Bastian 2013-03-22 17:58:38 UTC
No, it's still US Central after running 'timedatectl set-timezone Asia/Tokyo'

I think I see the problem, though.  On my system, /etc/localtime is a copy of the /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Chicago file.

I looked at the Fedora 19 Gnome 3.8 Test Day ISO image and I see that /etc/localtime is a *symlink* to /usr/share/zoneinfo/US/Eastern.

As long as /etc/localtime is a symlink, then timedatectl works fine.

But if you remove the symlink and copy a zoneinfo file to /etc/localtime, then timedatectl fails.
Comment 5 Jeffrey Bastian 2013-03-22 18:10:19 UTC
There were no errors from timedatectl, but I see it's part of systemd, which also includes a systemd-timedated daemon.  I tried starting it and I see this in the logs:

Mar 22 13:02:56 localhost systemd-timedated[1698]: /etc/localtime should be a symbolic link to a timezone data file in /usr/share/zoneinfo/.

My system has been upgraded from older Fedora releases hence /etc/localtime is a real file and not a symlink.  I guess this should be better handled by the update process.
Comment 6 Jasper St. Pierre (not reading bugmail) 2013-03-22 18:15:53 UTC
Glad to see you got your issues resolved.