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Debian 13, Postgres, and the US/* time zones

(rachelbythebay.com)
283 points move-on-by | 4 comments | 12 Sep 25 02:33 UTC | HN request time: 0.206s | source
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ggm ◴[12 Sep 25 02:48 UTC] No.45218201[source]▶
Is there a problem with ISO3166 denoted information in general or is there a specific US issue here? I would think ISO code denoted tzdata was a public good in some sense.
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masklinn ◴[12 Sep 25 06:27 UTC] No.45219199[source]▶
All the legacy time zones were moved out of the default zoneinfo install. It’s not a us-specific issue but the legacy US/ timezones remain in widespread use, and they stop working on Debian 13 ootb (possibly Ubuntu noble as well?).
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pixelesque ◴[12 Sep 25 07:23 UTC] No.45219568[source]▶
Does anyone know why they are still in widespread use?

Config defaults somewhere still using them? Man page examples? Tutorials using them? Or just force of habit?

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1. rtpg ◴[12 Sep 25 07:39 UTC] No.45219671[source]▶
Some of this is surely just muscle memory or intertia as well. I remember random config values from when I was trying out linux boxes back in high school that I replicated into files that just don't get touched for decades afterwards.

When was the last time you rebuilt your company's postgres config from scratch?

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2. Symbiote ◴[12 Sep 25 10:49 UTC] No.45220783[source]▶
> When was the last time you rebuilt your company's postgres config from scratch?

Last year, when we upgrade to version 17.

I looked at the example/template configuration, diffed it with our configuration from PG15, and for every change decided whether to keep our version or the new setting.

I didn't use it, but Debian/APT has had a tool to do this sort of comparison for any software upgrade for as long as I can remember.

Do other people just copy the old config and shout "YOLO!"?

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3. magicalhippo ◴[12 Sep 25 12:21 UTC] No.45221354[source]▶
Still typing "nano -w filename" each and every time since back around y2k when I was working on Linux for the first time I was told that bad things could happen if I didn't...
4. rtpg ◴[14 Sep 25 23:46 UTC] No.45244499[source]▶
When your configuration value from PG15 was different from the old default and the new default on something like the statement timeout, and the statement timeout was previously working fine, and obstensibly set for a reason.... I dunno, are you going to question the value that much?

And you might say "well I know how a statement timeout works" and I agree! I would also generally agree that something like a timezone setting would generally be something I'd expect to be fairly stable.

That's what I meant about rebuilding the config from scratch. Rebuilding from scratch would almost involve _not even looking at the existing configuration_ and then doing first principles footwork to figure out what is needed.

I think the diffing flow you went through is the right way to do it, but I believe that flow might lead to some values getting less scrutiny than others. Still perfectly reasonable though