On Fri, 2005-12-02 at 08:57 -0800, Robert wrote:

hello

ya know, i have researched this several times over a coupla sdecades and my brains have fallen out again... ;->

so... all of you that are setting up mail and web servers in the USA or other countries, are you clicking and turning on the

system clock uses UTC

selection on a centos install??

the reason i ask is i research this about every 3 to 5 years and i never remember what i figured out or thought about it... apologies

what is the wisdom and usage on the list please?

soooooooo help an old man of 40 out please? ;-)

thanks and kind regards!

• rh

Are you asking what:

system clock uses UTC means?

Or how to make the system clock use UTC?

UTC is GMT or Zulu time. It is the zero time that all other timezones are + or - from.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTC

Robert roberth@abbacomm.net wrote:

hello ya know, i have researched this several times over a coupla sdecades and my brains have fallen out again... ;-> so... all of you that are setting up mail and web servers in the USA or other countries, are you clicking and turning on the system clock uses UTC selection on a centos install?? the reason i ask is i research this about every 3 to 5 years and i never remember what i figured out or thought about it... apologies what is the wisdom and usage on the list please? soooooooo help an old man of 40 out please? ;-) thanks and kind regards!

Basically the default of _every_ computing platform outside of Utah and Washington [state] has been set the RTC to UTC and offset in software/locale/user-space/etc...

This has really been a key mindset difference between multiuser platforms and platforms that assume only one user is on the system, and it would only be used in one timezone.

Especially today with portables -- your hardware RTC should _never_ change (except when the UTC time if off), and not as you merely move timezones. The OS should _only_ offset, never modify the RTC (again, except for when the UTC time is off).