On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 9:35 AM, phanisvara das wrote:

On Thu, 11 Nov 2010 22:29:27 +0530, Greg Freemyer wrote:

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What is the correct way to have my time set so that both linux and windows get it right and I can bounce between timezones as I travel.

i remember reading, during install, that one shouldn't use UTC when also running linux. by default the option is checked, i think. if it's checked in your case, i'd try unchecking it.

Agreed, but that's how it was already. Further delving into the ntp config screen of yast showed the "clock source" it was using was my hardware clock. I changed it to use a ntp server on the net. That's fixed it from linux's perspective for now. I'll worry about windows tomorrow. Greg -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On 11/11/2010 11:38 PM, David C. Rankin wrote:

make sure SuSE is set to use local time *not* GMT. That is a must with dual-boot boxes (or at least it was through vista). Win doesn't understand the hwclock set to GMT so win will always be off by the tzoffset if you set Linux to use GMT.

Err, replace GMT with UTC above (although they are the same for all practical purposes, or for that matter, 0 zulu) -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. Rankin Law Firm, PLLC 510 Ochiltree Street Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 Telephone: (936) 715-9333 Facsimile: (936) 715-9339 www.rankinlawfirm.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Fri, Nov 12, 2010 at 5:01 AM, Carlos E. R. wrote:

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On Thursday, 2010-11-11 at 23:41 -0600, David C. Rankin wrote:

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On 11/11/2010 11:38 PM, David C. Rankin wrote:

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make sure SuSE is set to use local time *not* GMT. That is a must with dual-boot boxes (or at least it was through vista). Win doesn't understand the hwclock set to GMT so win will always be off by the tzoffset if you set Linux to use GMT.

Err, replace GMT with UTC above (although they are the same for all practical purposes, or for that matter, 0 zulu)

That setting will not work well if you change zones, because there is no zone information in the cmos clock.

Think.

Europe. Cmos store local time. Fly to New York. Linux. You change the the time zone, not the clock: it is automatic. The changed hour goes to the cmos. Now you boot windows - but windows still thinks in European time, and is off by 6 hours. So you also have to change it. And when you change its time zone it will also change the time again.

As I understand, Windows 7 can use the cmos at utc. So I was told, I have to find the setting.

- -- Cheers,       Carlos E. R.

Carlos, You sent me looking and I found: http://weblogs.asp.net/dfindley/archive/2006/06/20/Set-hardware-clock-to-UTC... It provides a registry key to tell windows the hardware clock is UTC. I've just created the key on my Vista install, so I haven't done any testing yet, but I'm rebooting now to set the bios clock and see how things go. If you follow the links you see that with XP it looses sync once or twice a day, which is crazy, so I would avoid doing this trick with XP. With Vista the only issues I found were that some games like flight simulator mess with the hardware clock and expect it to be local time. I don't use this laptop for games, so that's fine with me. I assume Win7 takes the same registry hack. Greg -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Greg Freemyer wrote:

The crazy part is that it seems the basic windows design calls for the user to change their bios clock every time they change timezones. That is just hard for me to believe.

That goes back to the DOS days, before portable or networked computers. In fact, back in those days, a hardware clock was an option and not built into the motherboard. Back then they were primarily worried about file time & date and not much more. With Linux & Unix, GMT was used from the start, perhaps because it was developed at a telecommunications company, where GMT is commonly used. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Greg Freemyer wrote:

So MS made a bad decision back when Bill Gates was still programming.

They made a lot more mistakes than that. ;-) Incidentally, I worked at IBM Canada in the late 90's. In order to to my job (3rd level OS/2 support), I had accounts set up on several different domains across the country. When I logged into a domain in a different time zone, my computer would change to the time for that time zone. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Friday, 2010-11-12 at 13:54 -0800, Greg Freemyer wrote:

On Fri, Nov 12, 2010 at 1:01 PM, James Knott <> wrote:

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date and not much more.  With Linux & Unix, GMT was used from the start, perhaps because it was developed at a telecommunications company, where GMT is commonly used.

So MS made a bad decision back when Bill Gates was still programming.

They knew it was a bad decision the first time someone took a luggable running DOS on a plane. Maybe 1983 or so.

Perhaps not, it was IBM. The PC had to ask the user for the time every time it booted. Time zones were not changed, you simply booted and typed the current hour. The machine did not run for long, anyway, and time was unreliable. Using local time was far easier than using UTC and timezones. Consider the OS had less than 360 KiB of disk space, nobody thought that the machine would be such a success and any design decision would have consequences farther away than 5 years. Including the decission to hire MS to do an OS! :-p

It really is not that hard to fix. Linux has had the "UTC / Local" checkbox for the hardware clock as long as I can remember. And as far as I know, it works reliably.

It is probably nearly impossible to change now, because any trivial change affects many functions and third party software. I don't think they see a problem with using local time, even if you travel. You have to change the timezone anyway, the clock is adjusted adequately, and on next boot it works fine. Only people double-booting to linux have problems - so why would they care? - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. (from 11.2 x86_64 "Emerald" at Telcontar) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.12 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkzd/EMACgkQtTMYHG2NR9UmUACfQMJxqCc0gAXlJNeUjAimE0YS TNkAnA84PlxpaIVSiEoc3NtrUcsDszTH =nZ67 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----