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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