[Bug 1227520] Re: Timezone changes are not working due to ro /etc and bind mounts

[Martin Pitt]

Please note that with a readonly /etc and the gross "mount individual
files to writable partitions" hack, there is no way to implement that in
a race free manner: As that setup makes it impossible to do rename() or
use symlinks, the only thing that programs like timedated or tzdata's
configure could do is to truncate() the existing /etc/localtime and
write the new data into it. That means that during that time (and until
the write cache catches up), any program which tries to determine the
current time zone will misbehave or even crash, as it can only read junk
from /etc/localtime.

I highly suggest to at least change our current hack to have a writable
/data/ partition and symlink files from /etc/ to that. This would at
least make atomic file changes possible in /data. The best way would
still be to either have a writable /etc or overlayfs/aufs on /etc,
though. There are certainly other programs which want to change /etc/,
and it seems our time would be better spent building overlayfs/aufs for
arm than with tracking down an unknown number of programs/applications
that change files in /etc?

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1227520

Title:
  Timezone changes are not working due to ro /etc and bind mounts

Status in “systemd” package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed
Status in “ubuntu-system-settings” package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  There is no way to set up a different timezone than automatic in the
  System Settings

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 13.10
  Package: ubuntu-system-settings 0.1+13.10.20130910.3-0ubuntu1
  Uname: Linux 3.4.0-3-mako armv7l
  ApportVersion: 2.12.2-0ubuntu1
  Architecture: armhf
  Date: Thu Sep 19 08:41:07 2013
  InstallationDate: Installed on 2013-09-18 (0 days ago)
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu Saucy Salamander (development branch) - armhf (20130918)
  MarkForUpload: True
  ProcEnviron:
   TERM=linux
   PATH=(custom, no user)
  SourcePackage: ubuntu-system-settings
  UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

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