[ntp:questions] ntpd oddness

Venu Gopal neo.venu at gmail.com
Wed Apr 2 13:51:13 UTC 2008


Hi John,

To alter the localtime zone in Linux, use tzconfig.
Till RedHat-7.3 the timezone was modified using 'setup' or
'timeconfig' utility. But since RedHat-8.0 and subsequent versions
'tzconfig' is used. I remember I've done this once.

Venu

John Oliver wrote:
> I'm having a small issue with ntp-4.2.0.a.20040617-6.el4 running under
> Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 update 5.
> 
> In the Kickstart script to configure the server, I specify:
> 
> timezone --utc GMT/London
> 
> After the installation is done:
> 
> [joliver at 0123456789-VCS ~]$ date
> Tue Apr  1 17:03:23 EDT 2008
> 
> /etc/localtime is a real file:
> 
> [joliver at 0123456789-VCS ~]$ ls -l /etc/localtime
> -rw-r--r--  1 root root 1267 Jan 31  2007 /etc/localtime
> 
> If I remove that file and replace it with a symlink:
> 
> [joliver at 0123456789-VCS ~]$ ls -l /etc/localtime
> lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root 23 Apr  1 21:04 /etc/localtime ->
> /usr/share/zoneinfo/GMT
> 
> The system clock displays correctly:
> 
> [joliver at 0123456789-VCS ~]$ date
> Tue Apr  1 21:05:09 GMT 2008
> 
> But, now, the hwclock is always 12 hours off:
> 
> [joliver at 0123456789-VCS ~]$ /sbin/hwclock
> Tue 01 Apr 2008 09:05:39 PM GMT  -0.323329 seconds
> [joliver at 0123456789-VCS ~]$ sudo /sbin/hwclock --systohc
> [joliver at 0123456789-VCS ~]$ /sbin/hwclock
> Tue 01 Apr 2008 09:05:52 PM GMT  -0.776568 seconds
> 
> 
> 1) Why is /etc/localtime a file by default instead of a symlink?  Is
> this just some silly Red Hat-ism that has to be avoided?
> 
> 2) Why is my hardware clock 12 hours off from the system clock?
> 




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