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Thunderbird ignores user TZ environment variable

  • 2 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 14 views
  • Last reply by ajdunevent

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On 64 bit Arch Linux, my system's timezone is set to US/Central /etc/localtime -> /usr/share/zoneinfo/US/Central

I work for a company in the US/Eastern time zone so the "work" user account on my computer has the US/Eastern timezone exported as an environment variable in several places (.bashrc, .profile, .xinitrc, .xprofile) export TZ=":/usr/share/zoneinfo/US/Eastern"

In Thunderbird 52 (and earlier) this worked as expected. Starting with Thunderbird 60, the "Date" and "Received" columns are reflecting the system's timezone instead of the user's timezone. The issue persists with a fresh profile.

This is probably related/duplicate of the following question even though the poster's system timezone and TZ variable seem to be in agreement: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1229111

Edited to include colon when TZ is pointed to a zoneinfo file per https://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/TZ-Variable.html (does not fix the issue, a fixed solution is below, but it is the correct way to do things)

On 64 bit Arch Linux, my system's timezone is set to US/Central /etc/localtime -> /usr/share/zoneinfo/US/Central I work for a company in the US/Eastern time zone so the "work" user account on my computer has the US/Eastern timezone exported as an environment variable in several places (.bashrc, .profile, .xinitrc, .xprofile) export TZ=":/usr/share/zoneinfo/US/Eastern" In Thunderbird 52 (and earlier) this worked as expected. Starting with Thunderbird 60, the "Date" and "Received" columns are reflecting the system's timezone instead of the user's timezone. The issue persists with a fresh profile. This is probably related/duplicate of the following question even though the poster's system timezone and TZ variable seem to be in agreement: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1229111 Edited to include colon when TZ is pointed to a zoneinfo file per https://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/TZ-Variable.html (does not fix the issue, a fixed solution is below, but it is the correct way to do things)

Modified by ajdunevent

Chosen solution

Exporting the TZ variable to .pam_environment but without the "/usr/share/zoneinfo" part does the trick for me.

So, for example, the relevant part of my work user's .pam_environment shows: TZ=:US/Eastern

Edited to include colon when TZ is pointed to a zoneinfo file per https://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/TZ-Variable.html

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Per version 60 release notes there is a new time adjustment that you may need to address. https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/60.0/releasenotes/

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Chosen Solution

Exporting the TZ variable to .pam_environment but without the "/usr/share/zoneinfo" part does the trick for me.

So, for example, the relevant part of my work user's .pam_environment shows: TZ=:US/Eastern

Edited to include colon when TZ is pointed to a zoneinfo file per https://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/TZ-Variable.html

Modified by ajdunevent