6 Mar
2010
6 Mar
'10
12:31 p.m.
Hi all,
I am a recent newcomer to Bitfolk, and indeed VPS's in general, and so far
good - far surpassing expectations in fact.
I have been busy migrating several of my services from my home server to
the new VPS and have noticed a slight difference in representation in time
- the use of UTC versus GMT - in areas such as logs, application variables
(Apache date-related SSI's for example).
My question is, can I change the system clock from UTC to GMT and, if so,
how? I am aware that I could tweak most applications (e.g. Apache's config
timefmt command) however I would prefer to change this in only one place
if at all possible.
If this is doable, would I risk breaking anything? I've seen some mention
of time synchronisation issues between the VPS and host system in previous
discussions and so am conscious that this could be a dangerous area for
idle tweaking.
My preference for GMT/BST is largely aesthetic, and perhaps also simply
what I'm used to, with a slight hint of British tradition thrown in also!
Would be grateful for any advice.
Regards,
Mathew
6 Mar
6 Mar
1:05 p.m.
Mathew -
On Sat, Mar 06, 2010 at 12:31:36PM -0000, Mathew Newton wrote:
I have been busy migrating several of my services from
my home server to
the new VPS and have noticed a slight difference in representation in time
- the use of UTC versus GMT - in areas such as logs, application variables
(Apache date-related SSI's for example).
My question is, can I change the system clock from UTC to GMT and, if so,
how? I am aware that I could tweak most applications (e.g. Apache's config
timefmt command) however I would prefer to change this in only one place
if at all possible.
Do you actually mean GMT here, or do you mean "local UK time"? The
difference between UTC and GMT is small for most practical purposes
(the difference is always kept to less than 0.9s), so if you actually
want GMT, don't bother changing anything.
I suspect that what you actually mean is "local UK time" -- i.e.
UTC+0 in winter, and UTC+1 for daylight saving time in the summer.
Setting this will vary depending on your distribution, but in Debian
(and by extension, I assume Ubuntu) by running "dpkg-reconfigure
tzdata". This will prompt you for the new timezone and configure the
system to use it.
The time-keeping issues that some people have with VM guests are
entirely independent of this configuration. Your VM will keep the
same drift from the host's clock that it always had.
Hugo.
--
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rest I wasted. -- James Hunt
1:54 p.m.
Hi Hugo,
On Sat, March 6, 2010 1:05 pm, Hugo Mills wrote:
Do you actually mean GMT here, or do you mean
"local UK time"?
Ah, yes, I thought there might be more to this than meets the eye! Given
what you've said, I do mean local UK time.
Setting this will vary depending on your distribution,
but in Debian
(and by extension, I assume Ubuntu) by running "dpkg-reconfigure
tzdata".
My naivety shining through there - forgot about the choice of distros. I
am using Debian so have given that a go and it seems to have worked
nicely.
The time-keeping issues that some people have with
VM guests are
entirely independent of this configuration. Your VM will keep the
same drift from the host's clock that it always had.
Thanks for that. I'll be using ntpd (with an one-off trigger of ntpdate on
boot), and have xen.independent_wallclock set to 1 in /etc/sysctl.conf, so
presumably I'll be okay in that respect?
Thanks again Hugo,
Mathew
11 p.m.
Mathew Newton wrote:
Thanks for that. I'll be using ntpd (with an
one-off trigger of ntpdate on
boot), and have xen.independent_wallclock set to 1 in /etc/sysctl.conf, so
presumably I'll be okay in that respect?
That doesn't change time zone, just where the time source is.
run tzselect or tzconfig, I can't remember which is better...
--
Best regards,
Duane
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but the optimist has a better time on the trip."
7 Mar
7 Mar
12:04 a.m.
Hi Duane,
On Sat, March 6, 2010 11:00 pm, Duane at e164 dot org wrote:
Mathew Newton wrote:
Sure - it was meant only in reference to the potential timekeeping issues
rather than setting the timezone.
Thanks for that. I'll be using ntpd (with an
one-off trigger of ntpdate
on
boot), and have xen.independent_wallclock set to 1 in /etc/sysctl.conf,
so
presumably I'll be okay in that respect?
That doesn't change time zone, just where the time source is. run tzselect or tzconfig, I can't remember which
is better...
I went with tzdata as Hugo suggested and it has worked a treat.
Cheers,
Mathew
5325
days inactive
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days old
4 comments
3 participants
participants (3)
-
Duane at e164 dot org -
Hugo Mills -
Mathew Newton