British Summer Time Problem with Gnome

Message

Deathscythe · Post by **Deathscythe** » Tue May 04, 2004 9:48 am

I just installed gentoo with kernal 2.6 and gnome 2.6. I have a problem of gnome's clock applet always one hour behind reguardless of what I do.

I have already use ntpd to sync the clock with time server on the internet, and set the locate to london time zone.

If I type date command in the terminal, it shows the correct time but gnome always exactlly one hour behind. Please help.

andrew_j_w · Post by **andrew_j_w** » Tue May 04, 2004 10:29 am

I believe that in the settings section for the clock applet there is a option to always use GMT. You haven't got that set have you?

(Sorry if that's a silly question, but it's always best to check)

Andrew

Deathscythe · Post by **Deathscythe** » Tue May 04, 2004 10:41 am

Do you mean the "Use UTC" option in properties? Its already unchecked, but the clock is still one hour behind. Any ideas?

huw · Post by **huw** » Tue May 04, 2004 11:14 am

Hi

Can you post the output of the date command. I had this problem but fixed it by making sure the locale was correct. Date now outputs

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 Tue May  4 12:06:10 BST 2004

huw · Post by **huw** » Tue May 04, 2004 11:34 am

right done some more playing.

My hwclock is set to UTC (ie GMT) using

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 hwclock --utc --set --date="5/4/04 12:26:00"

This can be confirmed by the presence of UTC in /etc/adjtime.

/etc/localtime is linked as below

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lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root           22 Mar 29 16:13 /etc/localtime -> /usr/share/zoneinfo/GB

and date outputs

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Tue May  4 12:28:50 BST 2004

Gnome clock shows correct time. I think it is "correct" UNIX practice to have the hardware clock set to UTC, but this may be wrong.

Deathscythe · Post by **Deathscythe** » Tue May 04, 2004 12:37 pm

The date output is

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Tue May  4 13:33:53 BST 2004

But the clock in gnome time applet reads 12:33pm, exactlly one hour back.

How can I check it is set to the correct locale?

huw · Post by **huw** » Tue May 04, 2004 12:39 pm

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ls -l /etc/localtime

Deathscythe · Post by **Deathscythe** » Tue May 04, 2004 12:47 pm

Cheers m8, this is the output of it

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lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root           33 May 3 23:22 /etc/localtime -> /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/London

huw · Post by **huw** » Tue May 04, 2004 12:51 pm

hmmm

mine is

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lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root           22 Mar 29 16:13 /etc/localtime -> /usr/share/zoneinfo/GB

and I have the right time. Can you try altering the symlink to that?

huw · Post by **huw** » Tue May 04, 2004 12:57 pm

scratch that. those two files are exactly the same.

Is your computers hardware clock set to GMT or localtime (ie BST)?

Deathscythe · Post by **Deathscythe** » Tue May 04, 2004 1:00 pm

Just changed the locate to /usr/share/zoneinfo/GB, gmone's clock still one hour behind, but the date output display the correct time.

Date output : 13:59
Gnome time : 12:59

huw · Post by **huw** » Tue May 04, 2004 1:03 pm

yeah, read my post above your last one!

I think it's to do with whether your computer's hardware clock is set to GMT or BST and what CLOCK is set to in /etc/rc.conf.

Deathscythe · Post by **Deathscythe** » Tue May 04, 2004 1:13 pm

ok I just did this

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hwclock --utc --set --date="5/4/04 14:11:00"

and make changes in rc.conf from

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CLOCK="UTC"

to

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CLOCK="BST"

Do I have to restart the computer for it to take effect, because the clock in gnome still doesn't change.

huw · Post by **huw** » Tue May 04, 2004 1:21 pm

Err, shouldnt have to reboot, just restart the clock service.

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 /etc/init.d/clock restart

What you have done is wrong though:

if you set the system clock to local time the line in /etc/rc.conf should read local (as explained in the file)

# Set CLOCK to "UTC" if your system clock is set to UTC (also known as
# Greenwich Mean Time). If your clock is set to the local time, then set CLOCK
# to "local". This setting is used by the /etc/init.d/clock script.

I would think that using the --utc flag on hwclock to set the hardware clock to local time is probably a bad idea too. Why did you do this?

Deathscythe · Post by **Deathscythe** » Tue May 04, 2004 1:31 pm

Err... I don't know why I use the --utc flag. I have reset the hwclock with --localtime flag now and I have change the CLOCK setting in rc.conf to "local" instead.

Just restarted the clock using

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/etc/init.d/clock restart

Same thing still happen, date output is fine but the gnone still one hour behind.

huw · Post by **huw** » Tue May 04, 2004 1:31 pm

arse. As you'd expect the clock init script syncs hwclock to system clock and vice versa on stop/start.

best to set the clock in the bios as you reboot.

sorry for all the hopeless suggestions, can't remember how exactly I sorted this problem out...

Deathscythe · Post by **Deathscythe** » Tue May 04, 2004 1:36 pm

Its ok, I will try to set the clock in bios now and let you know what happen. Do you think its something wrong with gnome? Maybe I need to remerge the clock applet because this only happen in gnome.

huw · Post by **huw** » Tue May 04, 2004 1:41 pm

Right. I've been experimenting some more,

Set hwclock as you did then use

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hwclock --hctosys

to set system clock to the hardware clock (this will be the same as changing the hwclock time in the BIOS and then booting)

date now shows the new time, GNOME clock doesn't change until I remove the applet and then add it back to the panel.

HTH

huw · Post by **huw** » Tue May 04, 2004 1:44 pm

actually, just checking and unchecking the "use UTC" preference box in the gnome clock makes it update the time it shows to the system clock time.

Deathscythe · Post by **Deathscythe** » Tue May 04, 2004 1:48 pm

Yes, that fixes it.

Thanks a lot for you help.

This gnome clock applet just weird, I expected it will change automatically, but it turns out that we have to force it to update.

huw · Post by **huw** » Tue May 04, 2004 1:54 pm

Hi

Glad you got it sorted! I agree it is strange that the gnome clock appears to keep time separately to the system clock, seems very illogical.

Huw