PostgreSQL parameter "datestyle"
S. Oberwahrenbrock
Running Bugzilla 3.6.3 with PostgreSQL database backend, I stumbled over an issue I'd like to report: After about 2 weeks of running Bugzilla without problems, "suddenly" users complained about error messages looking like this (partly "censored" with "xxx"):
The 'day' parameter ("2010") to DateTime::new did not pass the 'an integer which is a possible valid day of month' callback
at lib/x86_64-linux-gnu-thread-multi/DateTime.pm line 199
DateTime::new(undef, 'HASH(0x3dfc3c8)') called at Bugzilla/Util.pm line 460
Bugzilla::Util::datetime_from('15.12.2010 09:30:51') called at Bugzilla/Bug.pm line 2764
Bugzilla::Bug::comments('Bugzilla::Bug=HASH(0x3e02a20)', 'HASH(0x3e02a50)') called at Bugzilla/BugMail.pm line 360
Bugzilla::BugMail::Send(30, 'HASH(0x3e01c88)') called at /var/www/xxx/bugzilla/post_bug.cgi line 255
For help, please send mail to the webmaster (xxx), giving this error message and the time and date of the error.
Making some tests and comparisions with a test installation of Bugzilla I finally found out, that the PostgreSQL database server of the production system differed from test system concerning the parameter "datestyle" set in "/etc/postgresql/8.3/main/postgresql.conf". On production system it was set to "german" to follow the requirements of another application, that also has it's database on that server. The test system was set to "iso, dmy" which seems to be the default.
Having the other application in mind, I did not want to change the global server configuration - thus I modified the datestyle parameter only for the Bugzilla database with the following command:
ALTER DATABASE bugzilla SET datestyle = 'iso, dmy';
After that Bugzilla worked without problems again. I absolutely do not know why this problem came up only after some time. But definitely the PostgreSQL paramater has a deep impact to Bugzilla. It may be worth mentioning in the installation documentation or even worth considering it during database creation done by the installation scripts.
Greetings,
Stefan Oberwahrenbrock