Re: Time differs on windows 2000 and linux

sneaky56_at_gmx.net
Date: 03/17/05 

Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2005 21:19:42 +0100

fritz-bayer@web.de (Fritz Bayer) writes:

> I'm running windows 2000 and linux on the same machine. The timezone
> on the machines are the same but the time differs.
>
> I have noticed that windows 2000 uses the time, which gets displayed
> in the bios and that linux adds 2 hours to it.
>
> So I think linux treats the time in the bios as UTC time and windows
> 2000 seems to treat it as local time.

What happens is the following:

1. windows only handles the case correctly where the BIOS clock is set
   to the local time

2. most unices (all?, linux included) handle the correct way, being:
   the BIOS clock is set to UTC and each and every user can choose
   what timezone his in, using the TZ env. variable.

Now, Linux also can be told to use the BIOS clock set to localtime,
instead of UTC. This setting depend on your distribution. On Debian,
you can set "UTC=no" in /etc/default/rcS. In your distribution, you
must find where "hwclock" is called during startup and then give it
the "--localtime" argument and set the BIOS clock to localtime.

        tom 

-- 
as seen in a signature:
       "In an open world without walls and fences,
        who needs Gates and windows?"

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