de.archive.ubuntu.com is being set in the sources.list file for german language (de_DE.UTF-8) raring desktop installations using preseeds. (the preseed is attached). The sources.list file looks like the one that is attached when the timezone is set to Etc/UTC or US/Eastern and the locale is set to de_DE.UTF-8.
Manual installations appear to set the correct archives though. When selecting America/Montreal or London during manual installations with Deutsche language correctly set the respective archives.
Steps:
1. Do a preseed installation of raring desktop with the attached preseed file (default_de.cfg)
2. Inspect /etc/apt/sources.list and /etc/timezone and it could be noticed that they do not correspond to each other
(I used utah for installation, the how to is given in http://utah.readthedocs.org/en/latest/introduction.html#how-to-start-running-tests)
The steps are
1. use the attached preseed file and .run to execute the following command
2. sudo -i -u utah run_utah_tests.py -i /path/to/iso -p /path/to/preseed /path/to/.run
3. Check the sources.list after the intsallation
ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 13.04
Package: ubiquity (not installed)
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.7.0-7.15-generic 3.7.0
Uname: Linux 3.7.0-7-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.8-0ubuntu1
Architecture: amd64
Date: Fri Jan 11 13:49:21 2013
InstallCmdLine: automatic-ubiquity boot=casper keyboard-configuration/layoutcode=us noprompt
InstallationDate: Installed on 2013-01-09 (2 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 13.04 "Raring Ringtail" - Alpha amd64 (20130109)
MarkForUpload: True
ProcEnviron:
TERM=xterm
PATH=(custom, no user)
XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: grub-installer
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
UTC is a special case. It does not have any single country defined for it, so ubiquity's timezone plugin does not override debian-
In the case of US/Eastern, it's more complicated. I think there is indeed a ubiquity bug here, in that the timezone plugin only sets debian-
Is there any particular reason why you don't simply preseed 'd-i mirror/country string US', or whatever country is appropriate? You're going to have to do that anyway for the UTC case, so you might as well do it across the board, which would allow you to avoid this problem entirely.