FYI: /etc/localtime and changing to summer time

[Jeff Vian]

antonio montagnani wrote:

> Mary Ellen Foster wrote/ha scritto, On/il 28/03/2004 10:26:
>
>> If you, like me, are in the part of the world that changed to 
>> daylight saving time overnight last night (Europe, at least; US and 
>> Canada are next week), and your computer didn't make the change 
>> automatically, here's one possible explanation and fix.
>>
>> Check the permission on /etc/localtime -- it should be -rw-r--r--. 
>> Due to a bug in the Redhat time-configuration applet, it may instead 
>> be -rw------, in which case the time zone rules can't take effect in 
>> any account other than root.
>>
>> To resolve this, do "chmod a+r /etc/localtime" as root, and you 
>> should get the correct timezone. The bugzilla report on this problem 
>> is https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=109803, and 
>> it looks like it's fixed in future versions.
>>
>> Obviously, this problem is especially easy to miss during the winter 
>> in the UK. :)
>>
>> MEF
>>
>>
>>  
>>
> Another issue might be that you are running a twin O.S. computer with 
> Windows.
> I have to start Windows then re-boot and time is fine...
> Any other way to have summer time set properly in a computer like this??

Windoze resets the _system_ time for the daylight savings time changes. 
 This will be seen by booting to bios and checking the time there. 
 Check while on the standard time, then again when on daylight time. I 
have 2 boxes side by side, one windoze and one FC1.  The time is reset 
differently.

*nix boxes adjust the offset for the DST changes and do not reset system 
time.  Dual boot systems often see the problems you describe. This is a 
different way of handling the daylight savings time changes.  To me the 
*nix way is better.  Although both work, on dual boot systems one or the 
other OS will have time problems.

If your system cannot read the localtime link as the OP said, then the 
effect you describe would be anticipated -----  you are using windoze to 
change the system time and not getting an effective use out of the 
localtime offset parameters from *nix.