On Mon 17 Jun 2024 at 19:40:30 (+0200), to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 17, 2024 at 01:20:53PM -0400, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > 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. [ … ]
> > > > [ … ] /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 [...]
>
> Right you are.
So it comes down to nomenclature.
What should I call the timezone of my computer when it's booted up and
no users are logged in?
It's fine to say that the linux kernel is counting seconds since the
epoch, and doesn't have need of a timezone (ignoring UTC and TAI for
the moment), but there are many processes already running as root, and
they have timezones (hopefully one and the same).
You seem to be telling me that "system timezone" isn't the correct
collective noun for all these processes' timezone.
Saying it's the contents of /etc/timezone is now a legacy concept,
but at least it's less cumbersome than saying it's the name of the
file in /usr/share/zoneinfo/ that's the target of /etc/localtime.
It's fine for systemd to call it "Local time" in the context below,
but it's certainly /not/ the local timezone in KS, where it's nearly
midnight.
$ date; timedatectl status
Mon Jun 17 23:51:43 CDT 2024
Local time: Tue 2024-06-18 04:51:43 UTC
Universal time: Tue 2024-06-18 04:51:43 UTC
RTC time: Tue 2024-06-18 04:51:43
Time zone: Etc/UTC (UTC, +0000)
System clock synchronized: yes
NTP service: active
RTC in local TZ: no
$
I notice that man timedatectl says:
set-timezone [TIMEZONE]
Set the system time zone to the specified value.
Available timezones can be listed with list-timezones.
If the RTC is configured to be in the local time, this
will also update the RTC time. This call will alter
the /etc/localtime symlink. See localtime(5) for more
information.
Cheers,
David.
