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Deucalion: UTC timezone in eessi_container is actually WET/WEST due to system dictated Singularity bind-mounts #335
Description
The Singularity on Deucalion mounts the system /etc/localtime onto /usr/share/zoneinfo/Etc/UTC causing the UTC timezone to actually have the behavior of WET/WEST
This can cause failures in tests as observed in:
- {2025.06}[foss/2025b] AITW-wood_stiffness_homogenization, AITW-aiida-wood-permeability software-layer#1871 (comment)
- Add hook to skip UTC zoneinfo test for
orjsonon a64fx #330
Enabling singularity debug logs show the mount happening and disabling the mount of bind-paths allow UTC to behave as expected
$ singularity --debug exec /tmp/tmp.ZvcJkOsFxJ/ghcr.io_eessi_build_node_debian12.sif true 2>singularity-debug.log
$ grep -Ei 'zoneinfo|Lisbon' singularity-debug.log
DEBUG [U=31336,P=3084982]mountGeneric() Mounting /etc/localtime to /var/lib/singularity/mnt/session/final/usr/share/zoneinfo/Etc/UTC
DEBUG [U=31336,P=3084982]mountGeneric() Remounting /var/lib/singularity/mnt/session/final/usr/share/zoneinfo/Etc/UTC
$ singularity exec --no-mount bind-paths /tmp/tmp.ZvcJkOsFxJ/ghcr.io_eessi_build_node_debian12.sif zdump -v /usr/share/zoneinfo/UTC
/usr/share/zoneinfo/UTC -9223372036854775808 = NULL
/usr/share/zoneinfo/UTC -9223372036854689408 = NULL
/usr/share/zoneinfo/UTC 9223372036854689407 = NULL
/usr/share/zoneinfo/UTC 9223372036854775807 = NULL
$ grep -nEi 'bind path|localtime' /etc/singularity/singularity.conf
111:# BIND PATH: [STRING]
119:# for /etc/hosts and /etc/localtime. When invoked with --contain and --net,
123:#bind path = /etc/singularity/default-nsswitch.conf:/etc/nsswitch.conf
124:#bind path = /opt
125:#bind path = /scratch
126:bind path = /etc/localtime
127:bind path = /etc/hosts
144:# Enabling this option will make it possible to specify bind paths to locations
151:# Enabling this option will make it possible to specify bind paths to locations
Activity
Crivella commentedon Oct 30, 2026
Thanks to Miguel in slack it seems this is not a config issue but a known bug in Singularity, that has been addressed in Apptainer
I would leave this open until the default container runner is Singularity on Deucalion