[xubuntu-users] Time zones in Xubuntu 14 and 16?

[Urs Thuermann]

Knute Johnson <groups at knutejohnson.com> writes:

> I've got a couple hundred Xubuntu 14 and 16 boxes running in a closed
> network in Nevada.  Nevada is talking about changing timezones as is
> Congress for the whole country.  These boxes have no access to the
> internet.  They currently sync time with a GPS unit on their
> network. Accurate time is critical for the applications running on
> these computers.  I think they are all running NTP as opposed to the
> timedatectl service that is running on current Xubuntu.

You should be able to install the tzdata package from a newer xubuntu
release.  That package only depends on 

     Depends: debconf (>= 0.5) | debconf-2.0

which I assume will be available even in Xubuntu 14 and 16.  Also, as
far as I am aware, there has been no change in the format of the
timezone files since then.

Download the package on a current Ubuntu host which is connected to
the internet by running

    apt-get download tzdata

copy that package file, e.g. tzdata_2022a-0ubuntu0.20.04_all.deb to
your Xubuntu 14 and 16 hosts and install it as root

    dpkg -i tzdata_2022a-0ubuntu0.20.04_all.deb

Before installing, you could check if the new zone files actually work
on your systems:

    mkdir tmp; cd tmp
    ar x ../tzdata_2022a-0ubuntu0.20.04_all.deb data.tar.xz
    tar xf data.tar.xz ./usr/share/zoneinfo/America/New_York
    TZ=$PWD/usr/share/zoneinfo/America/New_York date

If this shows the correct New York time you should be able to safely
install the package.

urs