Crash on startup about tzdata

[FabienHenon]

I have the same issue with the same crash when release_ets is empty (:data_dir has been specified and is readable/writable. Everything was working fine a few weeks ago)

[bmurithi]

Ran into this issue in a live release after a box restart (was using /tmp as the data_dir).

The documentation in the README is pretty clear on how to handle this in releases.

You basically need to copy over _build/prod/lib/tzdata/priv/release_ets during deployment to the configured data_dir in prod.exs or config.exs.

Examples

prod.exs

config :tzdata, :data_dir, "/etc/elixir_tzdata_data"

Docker build example (multi-stage)

COPY --from=builder /app/_build/prod/lib/tzdata/priv/release_ets /etc/elixir_tzdata_data/release_ets/

Ansible Task example

    - name: copy tzdata data release directory
      synchronize:
        src: "_build/prod/lib/tzdata/priv/release_ets"
        dest: "/etc/elixir_tzdata_data"
        use_ssh_args: yes
      tags:
        - code
        - tzdata

[lau]

This can happen if you don't have an existing .ets file e.g. priv/release_ets/2017c.ets.

Did you configure the tzdata data_dir with config :tzdata, :data_dir, "/etc/elixir_tzdata_data" ? If so there should be a working .ets file there with timezone data. The tzdata Elixir library ships with one (https://github.com/lau/tzdata/tree/05dcdb4e3f5d05ba1281be9df959a70b52fad9ae/priv/release_ets)

If you are in an "iex" console and run Tzdata.Util.data_dir() this is the dir where there should be an .ets file with the timezone data.

[uberbrodt]

So I did have it configured to use a :data_dir and it was writeable by the process. I tested today and now it seems to work? I guess you can close the issue, I'll re-open if I can reproduce it.

[uberbrodt]

Actually, I was able to replicated it. So here's the issue. If I don't set the data_dir it works fine, but if I set it to an empty, readable/writeable, directory it fails with the above error. So are you saying that I need to have a .ets file there before the app boots? It won't create the .ets file on it's own?

[lau]

Thank you for writing about this. If there is no .ets file in the configured directory already it tries to download one at startup. However that functionality might be broken in the current version. I will investigate that.

Yes, if you add a compatible .ets file to that directory (for instance the one that ships with the version of the tzdata hex package), then it should work.

I will add some more information about it to the README.

[lau]

I have made a new branch for automatically copying the release from priv to the custom data dir.
See #53
@uberbrodt and @FabienHenon would you mind trying that branch and seeing if it fixes your problems?

[lau]

A new version 0.5.15 has just been released. It addresses a configured data_dir without any pre existing release_ets/*.ets files.