Package tzdata is not configured yet - when trying to apt-get install

There seems to be a great many posts from people with this problem or a similar one. tzdata seems very fragile.

date: error: bad command line -t value "Thu Jul 9 23:20:02 UTC 2015", must be a non-negative number

dpkg: error processing tzdata


I traced my problem back to the date when I used apt-get to install ntpdate. It overwrote 3 of the tzdata files in /var/lib/dpkg/info.

I moved the 3 new files to a backup and ran sudo apt-get upgrade. This seemed to allow installation of all the applications that failed to install since the time I installed ntpdate.

However, running sudo apt-get upgrade again fails to install tzdata itself (all the others were successful).

I have 2 questions.

1. Why did installing ntpdate cause tzdata to fail?
2. How do I get tzdata working again?

I would appreciate any help.

For your second question, you could try:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

That launches an interactive utility that configures tzdata.

Thanks, Dave. I tried that. It just seems to bring up a dialog box asking for country and city.

Yes, that's what it's supposed to do. It needs that information to set up the proper time zone configuration.

Something that improved things for me was "dpkg-query -s tzdata". txdata uses dpkg to store user-selected parameters. It seems that just the act of querying the application's database seemed to fix it so I can at least call apt-get install successfully.

I'm running a very old version of Linux. It is time for me to upgrade. That should clear my problem. Thanks, everyone for the help.

Hi "rick.heuft@ge.com"
first you are going to want to KILL OFF using that email
this forum gets indexed by bots ALL THE TIME

i suspect you are already getting a few SPAMS already

- it WILL get worse

reregister and DO NOT use your email as a user name


very soon that address will be SPAM central



next

is this a SINGLE Operating system install
or a dual boot with MS windows
THIS MAKES A BIG DIFFERENCE

I'm running a very old version of Linux.

that might be a very hard problem if it is unsupported
there will NOT be the current LEAPSECOND update

HI John.

How do I kill the account with my email as user name?

It is a single VM Ware image.

I'm currently using Ubuntu 12.04.5 LTS.

Thanks.

How do I kill the account with my email as user name?

I would send a private message to one of the moderators or administrators, or use the "Contact Us" link at the bottom of the page. Maybe they can simply change your user name.

I'm also using Ubuntu 12.04.5 LTS. It's not that old. It's supposed to be supported for five years, until April 2017.

It is a single VM Ware image.

this should have been in THE FIRST POST


this is a virtual install of the OLD ubuntu 12.04 lts

unless you set the VM to compensate the time might be a problem - as in it WILL!!! be off by the DIFFERENCE in your local time zone to UT ( Greenwich mean time )

for example
for Eastern time zone ( new york usa) it is -4 hours


this is caused by Microsoft setting the time on the clock in your computer to YOUR LOCAL TIME ZONE

Linux, bsd,apple,and every operating system EXCEPT Microsoft set the clock to UNIVERSAL TIME in a 24 hour clock

now
every linux OS can compensate for this
you can turn off UT time and use Microsoft's way

It's also possible to configure Windows to use UT instead of local time. At least it used to be possible; I haven't used Windows for a while.

But I don't see what this has to do with the original poster's issue.