On Tue, 2009-03-24 at 19:51 +0000, Aart Koelewijn wrote:
> On Tue, 24 Mar 2009 15:46:37 +0000, Nik N wrote:
>
> >> ... Well we used to call it [Greenwich] Mean Time. So just set the time
> >> to London England about and it will be right.
> >
> > (Well, my users might then conclude that the server is actually located
> > in Britain; this would definitely rub them the wrong way!
> >
> > As somebody else correctly noticed, if that was done, the issue of
> > "daylight saving" would again invalidate the idea of ALL geographically
> > dispersed but cooperating computers running on the same time.
> >
>
> Well, afaik the Linux kernel keeps the systemtime in UTC. This is then
> corrected by the value in /etc/timezone to the local time. I wonder, but
> it might be that when you delete/rename /etc/timezone the only known time
> in your computer might be utc, it will not know how to "correct" it to
> local time.

All internal timestamps are kept in UTC. This has been the case since
Unix was invented. All the timezone file does is display the time in
whatever timezone you want with all the historic idiosyncracies of each
timezone accounted for. The file /etc/localtime is what sets the local
time information. It is a copy of one of the zoneinfo files found
in /usr/share/zoneinfo. /etc/timezone has the relative pathname of the
zoneinfo file currently in use. If you remove /etc/localtime, the
timezone is set by default to UTC.
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I said nothing about how Unix/Linux keeps time (including file-system,
which is, in this context, part of the OS), I was talking about the
applications, which, as a rule, simply use the local time. The issue
is, at least the way I see it, simply this: should the Ubuntu server
installer allow the selection of UTC as the server's local time. I
believe it should. All other Linux distribution installers I ever used
provide this.

Nik

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On Wed, 25 Mar 2009 02:20:20 +0000, Nik N wrote:

> I said nothing about how Unix/Linux keeps time (including file-system,
> which is, in this context, part of the OS), I was talking about the
> applications, which, as a rule, simply use the local time. The issue is,
> at least the way I see it, simply this: should the Ubuntu server
> installer allow the selection of UTC as the server's local time. I
> believe it should. All other Linux distribution installers I ever used
> provide this.
>
> Nik

If you remove /etc/timezone the localtime is not known by any
application, so they can only use UTC.

Aart


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On 03/24/2009 05:11 AM, David Curtis wrote:
> On Tue, 24 Mar 2009 04:29:14 +0000 Nik N <niknot@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I just installed Ubuntu 8.04 server. Installer insisted I specify
>> a geographic location; and gave me no possibility to chose UTC
>> (formerly "Greenwich mean time") as the time zone.
>>
>> We require that the server runs on UTC time. Where/what must be
>> changed to accomplish this? TIA
>
> Unless the server install does not use tzdata you *can* select UTC.
> Execute 'sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata' and scroll down to select
> 'none of the above' and you will be able to choose GMT,GMT + or -
> what ever hours you wish or UCT,UTC,Universal and Zulu. You probably
> need to peruse wikipedia for technical differences between them all.
>

That works. As an added note: Atlantic Ocean|Reykjavik (GMT +7) is UTC.

For a desktop (Gnome), the default Evolution calendar/time/date dropdown
has a nice feature where you can add different location times; example I
have Sydney, Tokyo, Manila, Hong Kong, (UTC) Reykjavik, San Jose. When
you click the time/date icon on the panel, all are displayed & if you
have a weather calendar installed, it also displays the current weather
for each location just to the left of the time.





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On 03/24/2009 05:11 AM, David Curtis wrote:
> On Tue, 24 Mar 2009 04:29:14 +0000 Nik N <niknot@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I just installed Ubuntu 8.04 server. Installer insisted I specify
>> a geographic location; and gave me no possibility to chose UTC
>> (formerly "Greenwich mean time") as the time zone.
>>
>> We require that the server runs on UTC time. Where/what must be
>> changed to accomplish this? TIA
>
> Unless the server install does not use tzdata you *can* select UTC.
> Execute 'sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata' and scroll down to select
> 'none of the above' and you will be able to choose GMT,GMT + or -
> what ever hours you wish or UCT,UTC,Universal and Zulu. You probably
> need to peruse wikipedia for technical differences between them all.
>

That works. As an added note: Atlantic Ocean|Reykjavik (GMT +7) is UTC.

For a desktop (Gnome), the default Evolution calendar/time/date dropdown
has a nice feature where you can add different location times; example I
have Sydney, Tokyo, Manila, Hong Kong, (UTC) Reykjavik, San Jose. When
you click the time/date icon on the panel, all are displayed & if you
have a weather calendar installed, it also displays the current weather
for each location just to the left of the time.





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NoOp wrote:
> That works. As an added note: Atlantic Ocean|Reykjavik (GMT +7) is UTC.

^^^^^^^^^
Erm... no. GMT and UTC are the same timezone. GMT+7 is somewhere in
Asia, I believe...

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