+++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #481617 +++ I specified timezone --isUtc Etc/GMT in my kickstart file which was generated with system-config-kickstart and noticed after kickstarting a system that it was in EST (America/New_York) # date Thu Jan 29 12:10:37 EST 2009 # grep timezone /root/anaconda-ks.cfg timezone America/New_York The anaconda.log shows 16:46:48 WARNING : Timezone Etc/GMT set in kickstart is not valid, will ask I believe this is in part due to bug 404321 timezone.py now checks for /usr/share/zoneinfo/ZONE-NAME to make sure the timezone name is valid. However, the images/install.img for Anaconda is missing everything but the zones.tab file: $ sudo mount -o loop,ro -t squashfs images/install.img /mnt/tmp $ ls /mnt/tmp/usr/share/zoneinfo zone.tab kickstart.py does look in zone.tab, but there is no GMT listed in the zone.tab $ grep -i gmt /mnt/tmp/usr/share/zoneinfo/zone.tab $ In fact, comparing zone.tab to the full list of timezones available in /usr/share/zoneinfo/* on an installed system, there is quite a disparity. I count 400 timezones in the zone.tab file: $ egrep -v '^#' zone.tab | awk '{print $3}' | sort -u | wc -l 400 However, there are 1600+ timezones available in /usr/share/zoneinfo/* $ find /usr/share/zoneinfo -type f | sort -u | wc -l 1692
This is with anaconda-11.4.1.62-1 on Fedora 10. I have not tried rawhide yet.
Created attachment 330384 [details] Fedora 10 kickstart file
Created attachment 330385 [details] anaconda.log from kickstart
If I switch my kickstart file to use something that's actually listed in zone.tab, for example, Europe/Paris, then the system is correctly in CET when the installation finishes, however, I see this error in anaconda.log 17:35:24 ERROR : unable to set timezone
Note: I was testing the new text mode in comment 0 which is why it defaulted to America/New_York instead of asking me for a different timezone https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Test_Days/2009-01-29 I removed the 'updates=http://clumens.fedorapeople.org/notext.img' parameter and tried again and it did ask me, and one of the entries in the list was Etc/GMT. I picked it and it happily proceeded with the rest of the kickstart. When it finished, the system was indeed in GMT: $ date Thu Jan 29 18:09:21 GMT 2009 anaconda-ks.cfg included the offending line: # grep timezone anaconda-ks.cfg timezone Etc/GMT And anaconda.log shows 17:51:34 WARNING : Timezone GMT set in kickstart is not valid, will ask ... 17:54:50 ERROR : unable to set timezone
In documentation we limit allowed specifiers to that offered by timeconfig tool (which means zone.tab file plus Etc/... specs), so Etc/GMT is valid for ks indeed (GMT is not). This will be fixed in next build of anaconda (11.5.0.13). For the 17:35:24 ERROR : unable to set timezone we have bug https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=461526. It is caused by zoneinfo files missing in stage 2 and we are going to address it.