On Thu, Jun 20, 2024 at 23:17:42 -0500, David Wright wrote:
> And what am I to call the time that a system
> issues using that system default time zone?
If you mean the current time translated into that time zone, "local time"
is the traditional name for it.
If you mean an arbitrary past time, then it's just whatever the time
string says. "Three fifteen PM" or what have you. You're probably
reading log files or something, so it's convenient to have the times
presented in your own local time zone (assuming this matches the system's
default). This lets you align the log messages with any events that
you happen to remember ("hmm, that was about when the lightning storm
started"), or with logs from other computers.
Setting /etc/localtime to *your* time zone, assuming you're the primary
system administrator, just makes your life easier. That's all.
> If I boot up two computers
> and they display different times, what term is appropriate in your
> opinion to describe the time displayed?
They're out of sync. Or, at least one of them is. At this point
you check the NTP settings on both of them to find out which one is
at fault, and how to get it fixed. Maybe you check a wall clock or a
wrist watch or a cell phone as an independent time authority.
Or did you mean "the same time, but in two different time zones"? If
you displayed these times by running "date", which respects both the
TZ environment variable and the /etc/localtime symlink, then you figure
out which of them is set to an undesired value. And then you fix it.
Or, if it's set how you *want* it, then you leave it alone.
