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Re: ntpsec as server questions



On Wed, Dec 06, 2023 at 10:44:42AM -0500, Pocket wrote:
> Well POSIX has worked for me since the days of Xenix and System V.

Well, most of the goofy time zone changes were all *before* that.  But
there's at least one that happened more recently....

unicorn:~$ TZ=EST5EDT date -d '2006-03-12 +4 hours'
Sun Mar 12 04:00:00 EST 2006

unicorn:~$ TZ=EST5EDT date -d '2007-03-11 +4 hours'
Sun Mar 11 05:00:00 EDT 2007

So, OK, I guess the EST5EDT time zone in Debian 12 properly handles
the change to start of DST in the US in 2007 (and more specifically,
handles dates *older* than that using the historic rules instead of
the current rules).

Looking at other periods of interest from Wikipedia:

unicorn:~$ TZ=EST5EDT date -d '1987-04-05 +4 hours'
Sun Apr  5 05:00:00 EDT 1987

unicorn:~$ TZ=EST5EDT date -d '1974-01-06 +4 hours'
Sun Jan  6 05:00:00 EDT 1974

unicorn:~$ TZ=EST5EDT date -d '1967-04-30 +4 hours'
Sun Apr 30 05:00:00 EDT 1967

I guess EST5EDT in Debian 12 is more like a synonym for America/New_York
than a real historical EST5EDT as described by Erik Naggum
<https://naggum.no/lugm-time.html>.

If this is satisfactory, then you can continue using the legacy time
zone without running into problems.  At least on current Debian systems.
I wouldn't know how well-behaved that time zone is on other systems.

Honestly, I don't see the appeal of using legacy time zone names.  Is
it just for the sake of contrariness?


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