Dave Frandin wrote:
> The TZ variable was unset.. Tried putting an "export TZ=PST8PDT" in
> /etc/profile and the problem left... Had completely forgotten about that
> piece of the puzzle.. Thanks all, for rebooting my brain..
Instead of setting TZ, the personal timezone configuration variable,
it would be good to fix the system time.
# dpkg-reconfigure tzdata
That will bring up a dialog allowing you to configure the system
timezone. That sets the /etc/timezone file that everyone has been
referring to. And then the time will be in the right timezone for the
entire system.
> ... "export TZ=PST8PDT" ...
That "PST8PDT" is the old style timezone setting and has some issues
that are better to use the new style "US/Eastern" or "America/Los_Angeles"
or other appropriate setting. Timezones are human constructs that
don't follow logic. Using PST8PDT tries to apply a logical solution.
But in reality it is a table lookup. In the US this is by Act of
Congress. (Which I always find humorous. As an engineer I consider
time to be a property of reality and not a political one. But
congress disagrees.)
zdump -v US/Pacific | grep 2014
US/Pacific Sun Mar 9 09:59:59 2014 UT = Sun Mar 9 01:59:59 2014 PST isdst=0 gmtoff=-28800
US/Pacific Sun Mar 9 10:00:00 2014 UT = Sun Mar 9 03:00:00 2014 PDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-25200
US/Pacific Sun Nov 2 08:59:59 2014 UT = Sun Nov 2 01:59:59 2014 PDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-25200
US/Pacific Sun Nov 2 09:00:00 2014 UT = Sun Nov 2 01:00:00 2014 PST isdst=0 gmtoff=-28800
I use UTC for all unambiguous uses. When I need local time I use
US/Mountain for me and count on the tables from the tzdata package to
have updated to whatever congress has decreed so that I am in sync
with the neighbors.
You might also find these references containing various related
information interesting to read too.
http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/TZ-Variable.html
https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/faq/#The-date-command-is-not-working-right_002e
Bob
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