Bug 1870814 - fedora-minimal contains broken tzdata package
Summary: fedora-minimal contains broken tzdata package
Keywords:
Status: NEW
Alias: None
Product: Fedora Container Images
Classification: Fedora
Component: fedora-container-image
Version: 37
Hardware: x86_64
OS: Linux
unspecified
medium
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Clement Verna
QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2020-08-20 19:31 UTC by Simon Krenger
Modified: 2022-08-09 13:11 UTC (History)
7 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Doc Type: If docs needed, set a value
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed:
Type: Bug


Attachments (Terms of Use)


Links
System ID Private Priority Status Summary Last Updated
Red Hat Bugzilla 1668185 0 unspecified CLOSED rhel8-beta container contains broken tzdata package 2023-04-29 10:56:58 UTC
Red Hat Bugzilla 1722233 0 unspecified NEW tzdata: Allow complete removal of tzdata. 2022-02-15 20:33:30 UTC

Description Simon Krenger 2020-08-20 19:31:32 UTC
Description of problem:

In the `fedora-minimal:32` container image, the `tzdata` package seems to be installed but broken:

```
$ podman run -it registry.fedoraproject.org/fedora-minimal:32 bash
bash-5.0# rpm -V tzdata
missing     /usr/share/zoneinfo
missing     /usr/share/zoneinfo/Africa
[..]
```

This will lead to application errors (PHP errors in my case) regarding the TZ database. A very similar issue was resolved for the `rhel8-beta` image in BZ#1668185.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

registry.fedoraproject.org/fedora-minimal:32

How reproducible:

Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. `podman run -it registry.fedoraproject.org/fedora-minimal:32 bash`
2. `rpm -V tzdata`

Actual results:

```
# rpm -V tzdata
missing     /usr/share/zoneinfo
missing     /usr/share/zoneinfo/Africa
missing     /usr/share/zoneinfo/Africa/Abidjan
missing     /usr/share/zoneinfo/Africa/Accra
missing     /usr/share/zoneinfo/Africa/Addis_Ababa
missing     /usr/share/zoneinfo/Africa/Algiers
# ls -l /usr/share/zoneinfo
ls: cannot access '/usr/share/zoneinfo': No such file or director
```

Expected results:

`microdnf reinstall tzdata` will resolve the issue, `rpm -V` will then succeed:

```
# microdnf reinstall tzdata
Downloading metadata...
Downloading metadata...
Downloading metadata...
Downloading metadata...
Downloading metadata...
Package                                                                                                         Repository                                  Size
Reinstalling:
 tzdata-2020a-1.fc32.noarch                                                                                     updates                          440.1\xc2\xa0kB
Transaction Summary:
 Installing:        0 packages
 Reinstalling:      1 packages
 Upgrading:         0 packages
 Removing:          0 packages
 Downgrading:       0 packages
Downloading packages...
Running transaction test...
Reinstalling: tzdata;2020a-1.fc32;noarch;updates
Complete.
bash-5.0# rpm -V tzdata
# ls -l /usr/share/zoneinfo/
total 420
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root   4096 Aug 20 19:29 Africa
drwxr-xr-x  6 root root   4096 Aug 20 19:29 America
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root   4096 Aug 20 19:29 Antarctica
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root   4096 Aug 20 19:29 Arctic
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root   4096 Aug 20 19:29 Asia
[..]
```

Additional info:

Workaround is to execute `microdnf reinstall tzdata`, see also Bug 1668185

Comment 1 Simon Krenger 2020-08-26 09:57:32 UTC
Removing these files seems to be a deliberate decision: https://pagure.io/fedora-kickstarts/blob/master/f/fedora-container-base-minimal.ks#_39

```
# if you want to change the timezone, bind-mount it from the host or reinstall tzdata
rm -fv /etc/localtime
mv /usr/share/zoneinfo/UTC /etc/localtime
rm -rfv  /usr/share/zoneinfo
```

Proposed fix would be to copy the "/usr/share/zoneinfo/UTC" file back to avoid applications not being able to fall back to UTC.

Comment 2 Carlos O'Donell 2021-02-17 14:31:10 UTC
This needs more work to fix and test.

See: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1722233

Removing files without solving the technical packaging problem is always a bad design choice since it breaks validation.

Comment 3 Fedora Program Management 2021-04-29 17:05:48 UTC
This message is a reminder that Fedora 32 is nearing its end of life.
Fedora will stop maintaining and issuing updates for Fedora 32 on 2021-05-25.
It is Fedora's policy to close all bug reports from releases that are no longer
maintained. At that time this bug will be closed as EOL if it remains open with a
Fedora 'version' of '32'.

Package Maintainer: If you wish for this bug to remain open because you
plan to fix it in a currently maintained version, simply change the 'version' 
to a later Fedora version.

Thank you for reporting this issue and we are sorry that we were not 
able to fix it before Fedora 32 is end of life. If you would still like 
to see this bug fixed and are able to reproduce it against a later version 
of Fedora, you are encouraged  change the 'version' to a later Fedora 
version prior this bug is closed as described in the policy above.

Although we aim to fix as many bugs as possible during every release's 
lifetime, sometimes those efforts are overtaken by events. Often a 
more recent Fedora release includes newer upstream software that fixes 
bugs or makes them obsolete.

Comment 4 Simon Krenger 2021-04-29 17:29:44 UTC
Still applies to the latest container image, setting version to 34:

~~~
$ podman run -it registry.fedoraproject.org/fedora-minimal:34 bash
[..]
bash-5.1# rpm -V tzdata
missing     /usr/share/zoneinfo
missing     /usr/share/zoneinfo/Africa
missing     /usr/share/zoneinfo/Africa/Abidjan
missing     /usr/share/zoneinfo/Africa/Accra
missing     /usr/share/zoneinfo/Africa/Addis_Ababa
missing     /usr/share/zoneinfo/Africa/Algiers
missing     /usr/share/zoneinfo/Africa/Asmara
[..]
~~~

Comment 5 Carlos O'Donell 2021-04-29 18:20:55 UTC
(In reply to Simon Krenger from comment #4)
> Still applies to the latest container image, setting version to 34:
> 
> ~~~
> $ podman run -it registry.fedoraproject.org/fedora-minimal:34 bash
> [..]
> bash-5.1# rpm -V tzdata
> missing     /usr/share/zoneinfo
> missing     /usr/share/zoneinfo/Africa
> missing     /usr/share/zoneinfo/Africa/Abidjan
> missing     /usr/share/zoneinfo/Africa/Accra
> missing     /usr/share/zoneinfo/Africa/Addis_Ababa
> missing     /usr/share/zoneinfo/Africa/Algiers
> missing     /usr/share/zoneinfo/Africa/Asmara
> [..]
> ~~~

My team is still looking at how to fix this. Right now Patsy is engaging the python devs to see if the removal of the files can break some of their APIs in various modules. We want the removal of the files to trigger appropriate API error messages and not just crash or terminate the process.

Comment 6 Simon Krenger 2021-11-05 07:51:18 UTC
Still applies to the latest container image, setting version to 35:

~~~
$ podman run -it registry.fedoraproject.org/fedora-minimal:35 bash
bash-5.1# rpm -V tzdata
missing     /usr/share/zoneinfo
missing     /usr/share/zoneinfo/Africa
missing     /usr/share/zoneinfo/Africa/Abidjan
missing     /usr/share/zoneinfo/Africa/Accra
missing     /usr/share/zoneinfo/Africa/Addis_Ababa
missing     /usr/share/zoneinfo/Africa/Algiers
missing     /usr/share/zoneinfo/Africa/Asmara
[..]
~~~

Comment 7 Carlos O'Donell 2022-02-14 20:53:46 UTC
We are still working on this issue for tzdata. It still applies to Fedora Rawhide.

The fix will be in glibc and tzdata followed by coordinating with the image creation process to remove tzdata.

Comment 8 Ben Cotton 2022-08-09 13:11:06 UTC
This bug appears to have been reported against 'rawhide' during the Fedora Linux 37 development cycle.
Changing version to 37.


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