[lug] Time zone grumbling

[Hugh Brown]

On Thu, 2006-03-30 at 20:57 -0700, Daniel Webb wrote:
> I'm not sure if my problems right now are a symptom of Debian or the Linux
> world in general, but I've been using Linux for 7 years now and I have yet to
> see a sensible and consitent description and/or implementation of time on
> Linux.  For example, I chose (unwisely) the "use UTC" option when I installed
> a new Debian.  Now the "UTC" time gives the local time and the "local" time
> gives UTC-7.  So I should be able to change that, right?
> 
> $apropos timezone
> tzconfig (8)         - set the local timezone
> tzselect (1)         - view timezones
> tzsetup (8)          - set the local timezone
> 
> Hm.  Three ways to change the time zone, not to mention another one in KDE.
> All of which fail to address this problem.  KDE's clock has screwed up my time
> zone so many times I won't even touch it any more.
> 
> So, is there any place on the net that actually explains all the dozen or so
> config files and ways to configure the time on Linux?


I have felt your pain.  I don't have the pain-relief.  I've usu. had to
hunt through the start up scripts to figure out what sorts of clock
stuff is going on.

I'll make this recommendation though.  Get your hardware clock set to
UTC or localtime.  Adjust the settings for your distribution
appropriately to reflect that.  Link /etc/localtime to the right
timezone file (or just copy the timezone file to /etc/localtime) and you
should be good to go.  On debian sarge, timezone files are
in /usr/share/zoneinfo

I'd also recommend running ntp.

Hugh