Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 167787
Update of tzdata package doesn't update the /etc/localtime
Last modified: 2007-11-30 17:07:20 EST
Description of problem: Ever since /etc/localtime ceased to be a symbolic link we have a problem with updating the installed tiemzone dat ain /usr/share/zoneinfo. Setting the timezone copies one of these files to /etc/localtime but if the timezone data gets updated the copy remains the same. Updates don't take effect. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): every package so far How reproducible: always Steps to Reproduce: 1.set timezone to use a file which is known to change after tzdata update 2.update package 3.observe /etc/localtime Actual results: hasn't changed Expected results: should correspond to new file version Additional info: This problem applies to all releases and FC. We need to have a way for the tzdata post-install code to determine what timezone the /etc/localtime file corresponds to and then copy over the new file (if it changed).
That's a big problem though. 1) tzdata %post can't use /bin/sh etc., as we'd get into a dependency loop (tzdata requiring shell, shell requiring glibc, glibc requiring glibc-common, glibc-common requiring tzdata) 2) statically linked proglet to do the update is not going to work either - tzdata is .noarch.rpm and rpm doesn't handle replacing a noarch package with arch specific one I proposed years ago that system-config-date had a %trigger for this, but I think its maintainer was strongly against that.
glibc-common-2.3.90-12 in rawhide has /usr/sbin/tzdata-update proglet and runs it both when glibc-common is upgraded/installed and as %trigger for tzdata update.
As of RHEL4 tzdata-2006m-3.el4, the tzdata package does automatically update the time. I believe this bug can be closed.