On Mon, Jun 17, 2024 at 18:22:29 +0200, to...@tuxteam.de wrote: > On Mon, Jun 17, 2024 at 09:14:38AM -0500, David Wright wrote: > > [...] > > > You asked after your /system/ clock. I don't think I can tell whether > > it's set to UTC or Local Time, but only that it is correct, whichever > > it it on. Likewise the hardware RTC. The third line of /etc/adjtime > > says what the RTC is on; /etc/timezone says what the system is on; > > $ date says what your user is on. > > No: /etc/timezone just says what time zone a _user_ will "get" unless > they state otherwise. I.e. a user's default time zone. > > The "system" being "on" a timezone is something that, under Unix, > doesn't make sense.
Time zones are not in effect for users, either; they're in effect for processes. A given user's login session, which is a collection of processes, would typically all be using the same time zone, for consistency, but this isn't necessary. They might choose to run two clocks, one in their local time zone, and one in another time zone, where a family member lives, or where they're about to take a vacation. /etc/localtime points to the time zone that a process will use if it doesn't specify one via the TZ environment variable. And /etc/timezone is the legacy version of /etc/localtime.
