Re: An experiment about file timestamp (was: Timestamps jump by one hour when switching timezone)

[Rodolfo Medina <rodolfo.medina@gmail.com>]

Chris Jackson <c.jackson@shadowcat.co.uk> writes:

> File timestamps are (or at least should be) stored in UTC. It's the
> display of them that's affected.



But I did the following experiment: on a computer with system time set to UTC,
I created a file at 14:43 UTC.  Then I copied it via rsync and ethernet cross
cable to another PC with system time set to GMT, one hour late respect to UTC.
I expected that, on the 2nd PC, the timestamp was displayed in the local time,
i.e. 15:43; instead, it appears as 14:43 as well.  (For the copy I used the -t
option.)

So, according with this experiment it is not true that the displayed time is in
local format.

I think this may cause serious errors: in fact, when someone read the timestamp
on the 2nd PC, he would believe that the file were created at 14:43 of the GMT
time, which is wrong: in fact, it was created at 15:43 GMT = 14:43 UTC.

What do you all think?

Rodolfo