[Bug 1554806] Re: Change of behavior: "dpkg-reconfigure -f noninteractive" unconditionally overwrites /etc/timezone now

[Lars Kruse]

According to the upstream package maintainer in Debian (Aurelien Jarno),
/etc/localtime is the authoritive source of information, while
/etc/timezone is just a Debian-specific artifact.

Thus the preferred approach for changing the timzone is indeed the
change of the /etc/localtime symlink, followed by dpkg-reconfigure.

See https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=813226#10 and
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=848143#10.

** Bug watch added: Debian Bug tracker #813226
   https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=813226

** Bug watch added: Debian Bug tracker #848143
   https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=848143

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Title:
  Change of behavior: "dpkg-reconfigure -f noninteractive"
  unconditionally overwrites /etc/timezone now

Status in tzdata package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  In previous versions it was possible to set the system's timezone by
  editing /etc/timezone before running "dpkg-reconfigure -f
  noninteractive tzdata".

  This behavior changed, /etc/timezone gets overwritten unconditionally during "dpkg-reconfigure -f noninteractive tzdata":
  ---
  root at xenial:/# echo "Europe/Berlin" > /etc/timezone
  root at xenial:/# cat /etc/timezone
  Europe/Berlin
  root at xenial:/# dpkg-reconfigure -f noninteractive tzdata

  Current default time zone: 'Etc/UTC'
  Local time is now:      Tue Mar  8 23:09:39 UTC 2016.
  Universal Time is now:  Tue Mar  8 23:09:39 UTC 2016.

  root at xenial:/# cat /etc/timezone
  Etc/UTC
  ---

  As a workaround to programmatically set the timezone one now needs to point "/etc/localtime" to the new timezone:
  ---
  root at xenial:/# ln -fs /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Berlin /etc/localtime
  root at xenial:/# ll /etc/localtime
  lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 33 Mar  9 00:48 /etc/localtime -> /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Berlin
  root at xenial:/# cat /etc/timezone
  Etc/UTC
  root at xenial:/# dpkg-reconfigure -f noninteractive tzdata

  Current default time zone: 'Europe/Berlin'
  Local time is now:      Wed Mar  9 00:49:05 CET 2016.
  Universal Time is now:  Tue Mar  8 23:49:05 UTC 2016.

  root at xenial:/# cat /etc/timezone
  Europe/Berlin
  ---

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