Re: [gentoo-server] UTC vs. localtime

[Andrew Cowie]

On Tue, 2005-09-08 at 11:58 -0500, Robert Larson wrote:
> I just recently switched a few of my servers to UTC from localtime

My sense is that the responses you received in this thread, while
helpful, sorta missed the point.

There's no reason for a server to have any system-wide timezone other
than UTC, so yes,

> /etc/conf.d/clock: CLOCK="UTC"
> /etc/localtime -> /usr/share/zoneinfo/UTC

is correct. In fact, setting the hardware clock to UTC is most correct
for any Linux system - the only tie to mess with it is if the Linux
installation on a machine co-exists with a broken OS, say, Windows
perhaps.

But here's the real trick: *any* individual application can localize the
timezone information it gets by [re]setting the TZ environment variable.
And that should be all you have to worry about.

An example of that in action is slashtime, my timezone tool; see
http://www.operationaldynamics.com/time and the underlying code at
http://research.operationaldynamics.com/projects/scripts/#slashtime
It really isn't much more than resetting the TZ variable for various
timezones I'm interested in, and then calling strftime() a bunch.

AfC
Canberra


[P.S. You may have to recorrect the hardware clock *once*, see `hwclock
--help`. Also, be aware that NTP will only act if the skew is within
certain limits, so if you're way out, it won't do anything]

-- 
Andrew Frederick Cowie
Managing Director
Operational Dynamics Consulting Pty Ltd

http://www.operationaldynamics.com/
Management Consultants specializing in strategy,
organizational architecture, procedures to survive
change, and performance hardening for the people
and systems behind the mission critical enterprise.

Operating Worldwide:

Sydney    [phone]
New York  [phone]
Toronto   [phone]
London    [phone]

-- 
gentoo-server@g.o mailing list