[TriLUG] Can't convince Debian the system clock isn't UTC

[tomed at bellsouth.net]

Isn't this a problem on dual boot systems, in that MS likes to set the
hw clock to the local time, and Unix prefers the hw clock to be on UTC?

So that one or the other OS doesn't know what time it is.

Tom Ed White

At Thu, 05 Oct 2006 11:01:00 -0400,
Brian Henning wrote:
> 
> Hi Gang,
>    Seems like I had this problem before on a different machine, but the 
> posts I found about it (march of 05) aren't helping this time.  Here's 
> the skinny:
> 
> Brand new shiny Lenovo T60p, dual-booting XP Pro and Debian Etch.  Works 
> beautifully (for the bits I've figured out so far; ati setup was a 
> hassle but I conquered it, and the 3D acceleration makes my head spin!) 
> except...the clock.
> 
> I'm using KDE for my desktop environment.  The KDE clock applet is set 
> to Eastern/New_York, and consistently shows a time four hours slow (XP 
> shows correct time).  This seems to indicate that Debian thinks the 
> hardware clock is UTC when it is actually local time.  The thing is, 
> none of the settings seem to make any difference.  In /etc/defaults/rcS, 
> I have "UTC=no" (without quotes of course) and /etc/adjtime contains 
> "LOCAL".  Command-line tools such as uptime and top also show the 
> four-hour-slow time.
> 
> Further confusing me, I tried changing rcS to contain UTC=yes and 
> adjtime to contain UTC, and it made no difference!  The clock still 
> reads four hours slow.
> 
> The proof is in the pudding (or the date command, here):
> 
> % date
> Thu Oct  5 07:00:31 EDT 2006
> % date --utc
> Thu Oct  5 11:00:33 EDT 2006
> 
> Clearly the UTC time is actually local time.
> 
> So.. um..  What do I do to fix it?  I've tried Googling for how to 
> control whether the hardware clock is local or UTC, and nothing I've 
> come up with seems to be useful.
> 
> Thanks a lot,
> ~Brian
> 
> 
> -- 
> ----------------
> Brian A. Henning
> strutmasters.com
> 336.597.2397x238
> ----------------
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