Re: problems w/ date

[Mike Dunphy]

>>>>> On Sat, 19 Mar 2005, "Bob" == Bob Proulx wrote:

  Bob> Hi Mike!

  Bob> Mike Dunphy wrote:

  +> I have a debian 3.1 install and date reports UTC despite TZ=PST and
  +> /etc/timezone = US/Pacific [...] despite the time really being 7:30 am
  +> PST

  Bob> What is the actual output of the date command?  What timezone is it
  Bob> printing?  I don't believe this is a problem with GNU date.  Please
  Bob> show us the GNU date output.  Here are examples from my system.

  Bob> date Sat Mar 19 10:54:36 MST 2005
  Bob> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Hi Bob,

thanks for the reply

  Bob> I prefer the RFC-2822 compliant date string because it avoids
  Bob> confusion over name collisions in the world wide timezones.

  Bob> date -R Sat, 19 Mar 2005 10:54:49 -0700
  Bob> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

  Bob> I prefer not to set the TZ variable at all and to use the system
  Bob> default time.  But if you are setting it then you may need to use
  Bob> PST8PDT instead of PST.


Yes you are right it needs to be PST8PDT.

  +> Any ideas ?

  Bob> What does /etc/localtime symlink to?  On my machine:

  Bob> ls -l /etc/localtime lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 31 2005-02-01 23:31
  Bob> /etc/localtime -> /usr/share/zoneinfo/US/Mountain

that must be the problem I have no /etc/localtime ... I created it
and unset TZ and now it all works fine.

  Bob> On Debian you can run the 'tzconfig' script to guide you through
  Bob> reconfiguring the system timezone configuration.

yes I did that.

  Bob> tzconfig

  +> ntp commands also are that way ntpdate corvallis.cns.hp.com 19 Mar
  +> 15:29:40 ntpdate[14761]: adjust time server 15.7.240.32 offset
  +> 0.000424 sec

  Bob> I believe NTP and other underlying time conventions should always be
  Bob> in UTC.  It avoids much confusion.  If I recall correctly NTP always
  Bob> operates in UTC.  This is also true of other things such as revision
  Bob> control systems and things like that.

  Bob> On a different but related topic is timezone of the hardware clock.
  Bob> You can specify if the hardware system clock is UTC or a local
  Bob> timezone.  This is useful when multi-booting less intelligent
  Bob> systems that don't handle UTC time.  On Debian this is configured in
  Bob> the file /etc/default/rcS with "UTC=yes" or "UTC=no".  Setting to
  Bob> "no" may allow you to share the hardware system clock among multiple
  Bob> OSs.

Thanks Bob ... I am working fine now. The confusing part was that
the date command was reporting UTC time and that it was PST.

Cheers
-mjd