Re: How to switch my timezone configure

On Tue, Nov 28, 2006 at 11:57:14AM -0600, Martin McCormick wrote:
richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
The answer is yes, you can run dpkg-reconfigure on whatever package set
your timezone (may be base-config, but I'm not sure, and it will depend on
which release you have installed).

I am guessing your BIOS clock is set to a US timezone so is 8 hours
earlier than UTC. If so, you can easily change the bios at reboot, and
Linux will assume more time has passed. If the time difference is the
other way, you could confuse some cron jobs by putting the clock back to
before the time that previous activity logged. If you need to do that,
choose a time when you can leave the box switched off for more than 8
hours.

I just talked with a Windows-XP user to get things
straight, so here is what I found out. You can either set your
Windows time to local wall-clock time or UTC. You can have it
with or without Daylight Saving Time either way. Obviously, if
you pick UTC, for your windows time, you must also select a world
time zone. The concept is identical to setting up a *NIX system,
but you have a nice pretty world map to help you. So, if you
click the DST box and choose the right geographic location for
you, you may use both Linux and Windows and the time will be
right either way. Since Windows lets you choose UTC, that sounds
like the way out of the dilemma.


The last time I checked on Windows, it expected to have the internal
(BIOS) clock in the computer set to local time. Admittedly, I can't
remember when I last checked, perhaps some time late last century. If
Windows people have recently improved their system to make it capable
of handling UTC, good for them. I think I am not alone in being unaware
of recent twists and turns in Windows.

If you are trying to have both Windows and Debian runable on the same
computer, you need (purely as a convenience) to have them both set up
to expect the same setting of the BIOS clock. The UNIX world settled
on UTC for the BIOS clock many years ago, long before Debian existed.

Since you report that Windows can now be set to use UTC time, I think
you should switch the Windows setting to UTC and the BIOS clock
setting to UTC, and finally verify that Debian GNU/Linux (UNIX) is
still set to its default clock convention.

--
Paul E Condon
pecondon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


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