'No time zone found with key EST' in debian 13

[danielhoherd]

Description

In debian 13, the tzdata package has changed and no longer includes timezones like EST. Code within python-kasa is causing it to break when used in debian 13, whereas the same code functions fine in debian 12.

Workaround

A bandaid for this is to install the tzdata-legacy package, which includes the deprecated timezones.

Examples

Both of these examples were set up by running a docker container and then:

apt update && apt install -y curl
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh
export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"
uv tool install python-kasa

Debian 12

A working command:

root@a33d3da471be:/# kasa --host 192.168.9.79 off
Discovering device 192.168.9.79 for 10 seconds
Turning off Office AA0F

And some debug info:

root@a33d3da471be:/# head -n1 /root/.local/bin/kasa
#!/root/.local/share/uv/tools/python-kasa/bin/python
root@a33d3da471be:/# /root/.local/share/uv/tools/python-kasa/bin/python --version
Python 3.13.7
root@a33d3da471be:/# kasa --version
kasa, version 0.10.2
root@a33d3da471be:/# ls /usr/share/zoneinfo/EST
/usr/share/zoneinfo/EST
root@a33d3da471be:/# dpkg -l tzdata
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name           Version         Architecture Description
+++-==============-===============-============-=======================================
ii  tzdata         2025b-0+deb12u2 all          time zone and daylight-saving time data

Debian 13

A failing command:

root@1332b6287f11:/# kasa --host 192.168.9.79 off
Discovering device 192.168.9.79 for 10 seconds
Raised error: 'No time zone found with key EST'
Run with --debug enabled to see stacktrace

And some debug info:

root@1332b6287f11:/# head -n1 /root/.local/bin/kasa
#!/root/.local/share/uv/tools/python-kasa/bin/python
root@1332b6287f11:/# /root/.local/share/uv/tools/python-kasa/bin/python --version
Python 3.13.7
root@1332b6287f11:/# kasa --version
kasa, version 0.10.2
root@1332b6287f11:/# ls /usr/share/zoneinfo/EST
ls: cannot access '/usr/share/zoneinfo/EST': No such file or directory
root@1332b6287f11:/# dpkg -l tzdata
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name           Version         Architecture Description
+++-==============-===============-============-=======================================
ii  tzdata         2025b-4+deb13u1 all          time zone and daylight-saving time data

Additional information

• https://www.debian.org/releases/trixie/release-notes/issues.en.html#timezones-split-off-into-tzdata-legacy-package
• https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2025/09/11/debtz/
• https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45218111

[rytilahti]

Could you try if installing tzdata from pypi fixes the issue? I guess this would also be a temporary solution assuming the pypi package will get a similar handling, but it could be a quick fix for now.

There are also some other timezone names that are probably not part of the new debian package, so we are going to need a more future-proof solution. Any suggestions welcome!

[danielhoherd]

@rytilahti that does work:

root@93b28b3bdf00:/# grep VERSION= /etc/os-release
VERSION="13 (trixie)"
root@93b28b3bdf00:/# dpkg -l | grep tzdata  # no tzdata-legacy
ii  tzdata                    2025b-4+deb13u1                all          time zone and daylight-saving time data
root@93b28b3bdf00:/# uv tool install python-kasa --with tzdata
Resolved 17 packages in 19ms
Installed 17 packages in 20ms
 + aiohappyeyeballs==2.6.1
 + aiohttp==3.12.15
 + aiosignal==1.4.0
 + asyncclick==8.2.2.2
 + attrs==25.3.0
 + cffi==2.0.0
 + cryptography==46.0.1
 + frozenlist==1.7.0
 + idna==3.10
 + mashumaro==3.16
 + multidict==6.6.4
 + propcache==0.3.2
 + pycparser==2.23
 + python-kasa==0.10.2
 + typing-extensions==4.15.0
 + tzdata==2025.2
 + yarl==1.20.1
Installed 1 executable: kasa
root@93b28b3bdf00:/# kasa --host 192.168.9.79 off
Discovering device 192.168.9.79 for 10 seconds
Turning off Office AA0F

[ZeliardM]

@rytilahti I'm working on a PR that will gracefully handle the time zone issues for IOT devices better like the SMART devices. Should resolve this without having to worry too much about tzdata.

[rytilahti]

Thank you! So our options are either require tzdata (and pin it?), but if @ZeliardM can find a better solution that would be much nicer to avoid transitive dependency issues downstream.

[ZeliardM]

@danielhoherd I believe I have everything resolved in PR [#1583]. If you can remove the tzdata from the venv with pip or recreate the venv on your system or remove whatever it was that you did to fix the issue and then checkout my PR and test on your system that the time calls are fixed, then we can make sure that it is resolved.

[danielhoherd]

@ZeliardM i cloned git@github.com:ZeliardM/python-kasa/, checked out feature/iot-timezone-failover branch at 094edce and installed it into a clean python 3.13 environment, and successfully ran the command. This setup has so many log lines that I'm not going to paste the whole terminal scrollback here.

[ZeliardM]

@danielhoherd Ok, excellent! Glad to hear it worked successfully. Thanks for checking!