Timezone problem

C-TZ · n00b Joined: 10 Feb 2012 Posts: 33

Hello,

After a couple of years I've decided to start using Gentoo again, this time on a server (hardened with SELinux, Pax, etc)

Following the installation guide's localization howto I've configured this:

- /etc/localtime to be a symlink of /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Amsterdam
- /etc/conf.d/hwclock:
clock="local"
- /etc/timezone contents:
Europe/Amsterdam

EDIT: I interpret this as: I'm in Europe/Amsterdam, my timezone is +2 GMT and you should use the local (bios/system) time and not calculate things yourself.

when I use "date" (after env-update && source /etc/profile) it displays the time in CEST instead of GMT and two hours into the future.
date --utc does give me the right time but in UTC not GMT (which are not the same for those who think that they are).

Did I miss a configuration file?
Is this an error in the Europe/Amsterdam file in /user/share/zoneinfo??

EDIT: I've searched on google and found some articles including on this forum but they don't seem to help. I'm unable to figure out how to set the time +2 GMT (which is Amsterdam) and get it to display GMT instead of CEST. When I remove the symlink however, the date command does show in UTC time, still not in GMT.
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C-TZ · n00b Joined: 10 Feb 2012 Posts: 33

I'm wondering if it has something to do with the LANG variable I'm trying to set, but seems I'm failing, since the 'locale' command gives me an empty LANG variable (although /etc/conf.d/02locale is set to: ' LANG="en_GB.UTF8" '... ??

I can 'export LANG="en_GB.UTF8" ' but then when I restart the machine the LANG variable is empty again :/ ...
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NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue Jul 09, 2013 7:23 pm Post subject:

C-TZ,

Set your BIOS time to UTC and use clock="utc"

The only use for clock ="local" is when you dual boot with Windows.
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C-TZ · n00b Joined: 10 Feb 2012 Posts: 33

I know (I remembered that after posting, and it's about how to interpret the hardware clock, not OS dependant),
but, doesn't fix my problem. Still displaying CEST instead of GMT+2...
I've noticed that the GMT+* in /usr/share/zoneinfo/ are non-existent.
So I probably should give up and accept my time is displayed in CEST. :/

Which is kind of annoying...
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NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue Jul 09, 2013 8:09 pm Post subject:

C-TZ,