486255 - Timezone is displayed incorrectly in outgoing email with SMTP for 1/2 & 3/4 timezones (fixed in Date::Format 2.23)

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Bugzilla :: Email Notifications, defect)

Description

[Paul Schulz]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.0.8) Gecko/2009032712 Ubuntu/8.10 (intrepid) Firefox/3.0.8
Build Identifier: 3.2.2

The timezone displayed for outgoing emails when using the 'SMTP' mailer are incorrect.

Showing:
  Thu,  1 Jan 1970 09:30:00 +101800

rather than 
  Wed,  1 Apr 2009 15:21:00 +1030

This looks to be a problem with the perl Date::Format module, and the fact that our server is on a 1/2 hour time zone. The Indian timezone is reporting a similar issue: http://rt.cpan.org/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=36494

Switching the outgoing mail to use the 'sendmail' interface solves the problem.


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Change system time to 1/2 hour time zone (+1030, +0530)
2. Set the outgoing mail to use SMTP
3. Send bugzilla email message.
Actual Results:  
Timestamp in email is: Thu,  1 Jan 1970 09:30:00 +101800

Expected Results:  
Should be: Wed,  1 Apr 2009 15:21:00 +1030

Comment 1

[Paul Schulz]

This can be reproduced with a perl script..
----
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use Date::Format;
print time2str("%a, %e %b %Y %T %z");

Comment 2

[Max Kanat-Alexander]

The problem here is that Time::Zone, which hasn't been updated in forever, is just not up-to-date. The up-to-date TimeZone database in Perl is DateTime::TimeZone.

Basically, we should be using DateTime everywhere instead of Date::Format.

Comment 3

[Matt Selsky [:selsky]]

Attachment: v1

Comment 4

[Frédéric Buclin]

Comment on attachment 619571 [details] [diff] [review]
v1

This problem has been fixed upstream in Date::Format 2.23 in September 2009, see https://rt.cpan.org/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=45067. This version is available in TimeDate 1.17. So we should require Date::Format 2.23 in Bugzilla/Install/Requirements.pm instead of the current 2.21, with a comment explaining why we require 2.23.

Comment 5

[Frédéric Buclin]

Note that OpenSUSE, Mandriva/Mageia and Fedora 15 and newer all have TimeDate 1.20, but RHEL/CentOS 6 and older all have TimeDate 1.16, but version 1.17 is required to fix this bug.

Comment 6

[Frédéric Buclin]

Manu: could you check if TimeDate 1.17 or above is available in RHEL6, see comment 5.

Comment 7

[Matt Selsky [:selsky]]

Attachment: v2

Comment 8

[Frédéric Buclin]

Comment on attachment 624743 [details] [diff] [review]
v2

r=LpSolit, with a comment above it explaining why we require 2.23.

Comment 9

[Frédéric Buclin]

Committing to: bzr+ssh://[e-mail]/bugzilla/trunk/
modified Bugzilla/Install/Requirements.pm
Committed revision 8230.

Comment 10

[Emmanuel Seyman]

(In reply to Frédéric Buclin from comment #6)
>
> Manu: could you check if TimeDate 1.17 or above is available in RHEL6, see
> comment 5.

Note, RHEL6 contains TimeDate 1.16 (and Red Hat only backports security fixes so I'm guessing it's here to stay). Or do you mean RHEL7?

Comment 11

[Frédéric Buclin]

(In reply to Emmanuel Seyman from comment #10)
> Or do you mean RHEL7?

No, I really meant RHEL6. selsky said that RPMForge has 1.20, so this is fine. But you won't be able to ship Bugzilla 4.4 in RHEL7 if you don't have a newer version of TimeDate.

Comment 12

[Emmanuel Seyman]

(In reply to Frédéric Buclin from comment #11)
>
> No, I really meant RHEL6. selsky said that RPMForge has 1.20, so this is
> fine. But you won't be able to ship Bugzilla 4.4 in RHEL7 if you don't have
> a newer version of TimeDate.

I only maintain Bugzilla in Fedora. Xavier Bachelot maintains the Bugzilla that's in EPEL (the third party repo for RHEL/CentOS).

Comment 13

[Frédéric Buclin]

Added to relnotes for 4.4.