Roger Oberholtzer said the following on 07/18/2011 06:29 PM:
Can I be sure ntp knows that my 2 hour time difference on the hardware clock is correct and not an error? Remember that the hardware clock is UTC time. And we do not all live in that timezone. I can't help but feel that when a non-localhost server is not found, ntp gets confused about this.
Many of us who don't like in the UTC timezone can say "it works for me". I set this all up CLI from the man pages and a How-To a long time ago, so I don't think I can led you though it, and as hers have pointed out, my idea of what goes where is a bit confused. But I don't have the problems you describe. What you seem to be saying is that if NTP can't find an external reference (e.g. the network isn't up, the laptop is 'standalone') you see a problem. You think the problem is that the hardware clock being UTC and being 2 hours different from localtime is the problem. Well my hardware clock s FIVE hours away from my local time. But I don't have your problems. In "man hwclock: I read <quote> -u, --utc --localtime Indicates that the Hardware Clock is kept in Coordinated Universal Time or local time, respectively. It is your choice whether to keep your clock in UTC or local time, but nothing in the clock tells which you've chosen. So this option is how you give that information to hwclock. If you specify the wrong one of these options (or specify neither and take a wrong default), both setting and querying of the Hardware Clock will be messed up. If you specify neither --utc nor --localtime , the default is whichever was specified the last time hwclock was used to set the clock (i.e. hwclock was successfully run with the --set, --systohc, or --adjust options), as recorded in the adjtime file. <quote> My understanding is that "under the hood" UNIX of old ALWAYS worked in GMT, which we now UTC. I believe all Internet clocks work in UTC as well.. At the application layer the translation from UTC/GMT to local time is done. That's where DST and the like are accommodated. It may be that you have the variable "TZ" in the environment. Or not. In which case, as the manual says, a system default is used. Which is probably the timezone information in compiled form in /etc/timezone See "apropos timezone" However the above quote makes it clear that you can mess things up. [1] http://www.nist.gov/pml/div688/grp40/its.cfm <quote> Many of the available NTP software clients for personal computers don’t do any averaging at all. Instead, they make a single timing request to a signal server (just like a Daytime or Time client) and then use this information to set their computer’s clock. The proper name for this type of client is SNTP (Simple Network Time Protocol). The NIST servers listen for a NTP request on port 123, and respond by sending a udp/ip data packet in the NTP format. The data packet includes a 64-bit timestamp containing the time in UTC seconds since January 1, 1900 with a resolution of 200 ps. </quote> I use three reference servers in North America -- Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own governours, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives. --James Madison, quoted on the Library of Congress -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org