On Tue, 2004-12-07 at 05:39 +0000, Trevor Smith wrote: > (You can skip the preamble and just read the last sentence/question if you're > short on time.) > > I had thought that the standard way to set up a linux system was to set the > system time to the UTC (or Greenwich mean time or whatever) and set the > appropriate TZ variable. > > I just realized that my system is not set like that. Or at least it does not > appear to be. > > I was setting up a GPG key on my girlfriend's computer (in the same house) and > emailed a bit back and forth. She noted that my messages were coming through > to her as being sent 4 hrs earlier than the current time. Then I couldn't > import her GPG key because GPG said it was created about 4 hrs in the future > (from my system's perspective). > > Now, I realized that my system is in AST, which is -0400 from UTC or Greenwich > (which is it anyway?) so that explained that. I set my time clock to be UTC, > then selected the Show Timezone->America/Halifax setting from the clock > applet in my KDE launchbar but... > > As you'll see from this email, my emails are now being reported as having been > sent at 5something am (currently). Indeed, viewing the headers of my emails > to myself shows: > > Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 05:31:25 +0000 > > This should be: > > Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 05:31:25 -0400 > or would that be: > Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 01:31:25 -0400 > ? > > Anyway, KMail has no way to set the TZ variable that I can find, and I'm sure > it's supposed to be system-wide anyway. > > Any suggestions about where/what I'm missing? Where can I set the TZ variable > (or whatever it's called)? system-config.time will do it for you. It will set the time zone in /etc/sysconfig/clock. You can also run the ntp service to keep your system fairly well synchronized to the atomic clock or other reliable time source. Thomas
