[Bug 1880968] Re: fixrtc fails due to bad format of input to the date command

[Alfonso Sanchez-Beato]

I have updated to focal-proposed and checked that now there is no

date: invalid date '          Wed Apr  1 17:23:44 2020'

output anymore in the console and that fixrtc finishes as expected.

$ apt info initramfs-tools
Package: initramfs-tools
Version: 0.136ubuntu6.2
...
$ cat /proc/cmdline 
BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.4.0-1003-bluefield root=LABEL=writable ro console=ttyAMA0 earlycon=pl011,0x01000000 fixrtc
$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID:	Ubuntu
Description:	Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
Release:	20.04
Codename:	focal
$ uname -a
Linux ubuntu 5.4.0-1003-bluefield #4-Ubuntu SMP PREEMPT Fri Jun 12 17:02:31 UTC 2020 aarch64 aarch64 aarch64 GNU/Linux


** Tags removed: verification-needed-focal
** Tags added: verification-done-focal

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1880968

Title:
  fixrtc fails due to bad format of input to the date command

Status in initramfs-tools package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released
Status in initramfs-tools source package in Focal:
  Fix Committed

Bug description:
  The fixrtc script is failing with message:

  date: invalid date '          Wed Apr  1 17:23:44 2020'

  when calling the date command. It looks like it does not like the
  leading spaces for the input date. The date is taken from 'dumpe2fs
  -h' ouptput, and some clean-up on it happens, but it looks like it is
  not enough for BusyBox' date command, at least for the version in
  focal.

  Backporting this to focal is needed.

  [Impact]

  The system date shown on first boot is incorrect, which can be
  problematic on first boot if at that point in time there is no network
  connection. If fixrtc works correctly at least we get the date of the
  last time the rootfs was mounted, which is modern enough to avoid
  problems with snap assertions validation, etc.

  [Test case]

  Boot an image with fixrtc in the kernel command line in a system with
  no network. snap seeding will fail without the patch.

  [Regression Potential]

  Quite small, as the fix is small and targeted.

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