Plugins » Katello

I know that some work has been done to fix the time "weirdness" around sync plans and that it stems from originally not storing timezone info, but there is still a lot of weirdness w/ Sync plan times...

Background¶

Katello: 3.15.2
Foreman: 2.0.1

Server Timezone: Arizona/Phoenix (MST UTC-0700)
Foreman User Profile Timezone: Browser timezone
My Browser Timezone: America/Denver (MDT UTC-0600)

Summary¶

This all started from setting a Sync plan up like:

$ hammer sync-plan update --name Daily --interval daily --sync-date 2011-06-12T03:05:00MST

I expected that to run last night at 03:05AM MDT but it instead ran at 09:05 MDT.

So lets see what hammer thinks about the next run.

$ hammer sync-plan update --name Daily --interval daily --sync-date 2011-06-12T03:05:00MST
Sync plan updated.
$ hammer sync-plan info --name Daily | grep Next                                          
Next Sync:          2020/07/11 10:05:00

(in UI) Next Sync: July 11, 2020, 04:05 AM

I suspect it'll run at 09:05:00 AM July 11 MDT.

It got even weirder when I tried to use cron schedules...

hammer + cron¶

$ hammer sync-plan update --name Daily --interval custom\ cron --cron-expression '05 03 * * *'
Sync plan updated.
$ hammer sync-plan info --name Daily | grep Next                                              
Next Sync:          2020/07/11 03:05:00

UI Shows Next Sync: July 10, 2020, 09:05 PM

UI + cron¶

Note: 03:06 because just saving "05 03 * * *" again doesn't cause a change

(in UI) Interval: Custom Cron
(in UI) Cron Expression: 06 03 * * *
(in UI) <SAVE>
(in UI) Next Sync: July 11, 2020, 03:06 AM

Ok, lets check hammer.

$ hammer sync-plan info --name Daily | grep Next
Next Sync:          2020/07/11 09:06:00

Fine, go back to interval "daily" + sync date¶

hammer sync-plan update --name Daily --interval daily --sync-date 2011-06-12T03:05:00MST
Sync plan updated.
$ hammer sync-plan info --name Daily | grep Next                                          
Next Sync:          2020/07/11 10:05:00

(in UI) Next Sync: July 11, 2020, 04:05 AM

Thoughts¶

I could go on, I did a bunch more tests. More combinations of cron, setting the date at 2011-06-12T03:05:00 with and without timezone using hammer in the UI and on and on.

Expected behavior¶

I guess as a user what I expect is something like the following.

1. Browser should show Next sync in my Browser's timezone or the one in my preferences.
2. Hammer should show Next sync in my shell's timezone
3. Cron expressions should ALWAYS be evaluated in the context of the server's timezone, that is the TZ of the process running katello.

Possible improvements¶

UI

1. Show both browser time and server time (as calculated by the process running katello) in the UI
2. If the user's timezone is NOT "Browser timezone" indicate that in the UI "from preferences" or something
3. When entering time on the UI allow the user to choose "server time" or "local time" (browser time or preferred time)

Hammer

1. Show both shell and server time in the "info" view, use UTC everywhere else (CSV)
2. Be clear about TZ in --sync-date parameter, if no TZ provided then server timezone
3. Document 'custom cron' is in the server's timezone