Wrong timezone in VMs: where the value for qubesdb-read /qubes-timezone comes from?

[Pablo Di Noto]

Hello,

Somewhere along the update from 3.1 to 3.2rc1 I started to have all my VMs take UTC as their timezone.

dom0 has the correct "America/Argentina/Cordoba" timezone, but all VMs get incorrectly set to "Argentina/Cordoba", which does not exists thus leaving them at UTC.

I know may have manually set somehow the wrong timezone (without the required "America/" prefix) at install or update. Now all my templates get set to "Argentina/Cordoba", which is the value they get from "qubesdb-read /qubes-timezone" at every boot by qubes-sysinit.sh script.

I cannot figure out where that values comes from and how to fix it.

Thanks in advance,
///Pablo

[Andrew David Wong]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
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It might be worth trying to set the locale in your TemplateVM(s). For example,
these commands should work on fedora-23 (and some other distros):

To display your currently set locale:

$ locale

To set a locale:

# localectl set-locale <your_locale>

For a list of available locales:

$ localectl list-locales

- --
Andrew David Wong (Axon)
Community Manager, Qubes OS
https://www.qubes-os.org
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[Pablo Di Noto]

El miércoles, 31 de agosto de 2016, 12:26:42 (UTC), Andrew David Wong escribió:

> On 2016-08-31 04:48, Pablo Di Noto wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > Somewhere along the update from 3.1 to 3.2rc1 I started to have all my VMs
> > take UTC as their timezone.
> >
> > dom0 has the correct "America/Argentina/Cordoba" timezone, but all VMs get
> > incorrectly set to "Argentina/Cordoba", which does not exists thus leaving
> > them at UTC.
> >
> > I know may have manually set somehow the wrong timezone (without the
> > required "America/" prefix) at install or update. Now all my templates get
> > set to "Argentina/Cordoba", which is the value they get from "qubesdb-read
> > /qubes-timezone" at every boot by qubes-sysinit.sh script.
> >
> > I cannot figure out where that values comes from and how to fix it.
> >
> > Thanks in advance, ///Pablo
> >
>
> It might be worth trying to set the locale in your TemplateVM(s). For example,
> these commands should work on fedora-23 (and some other distros):
>
> To display your currently set locale:
>
> $ locale
>
> To set a locale:
>
> # localectl set-locale <your_locale>
>
> For a list of available locales:
>
> $ localectl list-locales
>

Thanks for the suggestion. In fact, something similar is what I use as workaround into the browsing VMs.

The drawback is that I have to set the correct timezone for each VM upon booting, each time, as the setting will be overriden at next boot by the init script.

Regards,
///Pablo

[Andrew David Wong]

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Hash: SHA512

Two options:

1. Change the locale in the TemplateVM instead of the AppVM so that the
overriding value is the desired one.

2. Add the command to change to the desired locale to /rw/config/rc.local (in
the AppVM), then make that file executable (chmod +x). Every command in that
file is executed as root each time the AppVM is started.

- --
Andrew David Wong (Axon)
Community Manager, Qubes OS
https://www.qubes-os.org
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[Pablo Di Noto]

There is no difference setting it at the TemplateVM, as it is also overridden by the script there.

> 2. Add the command to change to the desired locale to /rw/config/rc.local (in
> the AppVM), then make that file executable (chmod +x). Every command in that
> file is executed as root each time the AppVM is started.

Thanks Andrew!

This works, but still makes you reset the timezone on each TemplateVM when traveling. Not a big deal. I will keep trying to find the root cause of this, albeit to understand the mechanics behind the scenes.

Regards,
///Pablo