Re: system time has change while installing
On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 10:47:12 +0300
Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Storing local time in the hardware clock is utterly wrong for many
> > > reasons. The only reason Microsoft have continued to ship Windows
> > > configured this way is the usual backwards-compatibility problem.
> > > If you're running on a system without the limitations of DOS,
> > > there is no good reason to perpetuate the crap this way: store
> > > UTC and leave the clock alone.
> >
> > But this a) would require tweaking Windows [1] in case of dual-boot;
> > b) show bogus time in BIOS setup screen.
>
> Why is UTC time bogus?
Well, I am simply afraid of a possible knee-jerk reaction of an admin
who for whatever reason manages to hit the BIOS setup program and sees
martian time there, which they would likely attempt to "fix".
I mean, keeping the time, which BIOS thinks is local, as UTC is
certainly possible but it requires implementing a policy, so that
everyone managing such a machine should be trained to keep that in mind.
Now imagine a heterogenous environment (as I do have at my $dayjob)
where there's lots of Windows machines and a number of Debian (and
other Linux-based) machines. I positively see no reason to introduce
distinctions between these boxes with regard to their BIOS time.
This is really an "implementation detail".
IMO, putting a string "LOCAL" to the /etc/adjtime file is way less
hassle to carry out than implementing a policy and training admins.
For a bedroom x86 machine, keeping its BIOS time as UTC is perfectly
acceptable as it usually has zero to one administrators.
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