On Fri, 2006-06-16 at 10:59 -0400, Adam Gibson wrote:
Mike wrote:
Tom Brown wrote:
How can i change the timezone on a 4.3 box? This used to be available using the 'setup' utility but seems not anymore.
thanks
I've always removed /etc/localtime and created a symbolic link to the timezone file of choice.
ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/GMT /etc/localtime
Older versions of RedHat (6.x maybe) used to place a link instead of a copy of the zoneinfo file when configuring the timezone by default. I wonder why they changed it to a copy. Only thing I can think of is that if the timezone directory structure changes during an RPM update your localtime link will stop working. The disadvantage of the current copy behavior is that when the zoneinfo gets updated(like the new US Daylight changes next year) you have to manually go to all the servers and set the timezone again(manually or through the utility that comes with the RedHat/CentOS version you are using).
The reason they changed is that /usr is not ALWAYS available for linking on all systems. By design, /usr is not available in single user mode ... also maybe not available in some custom runlevel 2 setups by clients.
/etc is always there ... even in single use mode.
This doesn't effect 99% of people ... as /usr is always available in my boot ups, and if I need to change the timezone, I do create links ... but it is probably more technically correct to copy the file instead to /etc.