Annoying clock problems

Cotton · 2005-09-29 23:14:36

I'm thoroughly confused over the clock on my pc.

After running: rdate -s time.nist.gov

The time reported in vc1 with "hwclock" (as root) is 23:54 BST (this is the correct time)
The time reported in vc2 with "hwclock" (as a normal user) is 18:54 EDT (this is incorrect)
The time reported in an Xterm window with "hwclock" (as root) is 23:54 EDT (this is incorrect)

The time reported in vc1 with "date" (as root) is 23:54 BST (this is the correct time)
The time reported in vc2 with "date" (as a normal user) is 18:54 EDT (this is incorrect)
The time reported in an Xterm window with "date" (as root) is 18:54 EDT (this is incorrect)

/etc/rc.conf contains:
HARDWARECLOCK="UTC"
TIMEZONE=Europe/London

I seem to be stuck with a 5 hour offset or something when using X.

What on earth is going on? (BTW this is not a clock drift problem)

It used to work fine but I had difficulties recently trying to change to udev (had to revert to devfs,under kernel 2.6.12-ck5) and have experienced the problem ever since.

Kern · 2005-09-30 07:43:19

tried HARDWARECLOCK="localtime" ?

edit:
you dont have Windows on the same machine do you?
and maybe check your timesetting directly from BIOS as a point of reference.
really good expo Here

Cotton · 2005-09-30 15:43:33

Yes I've tried HARDWARECLOCK="localtime" and it makes no difference to the readings above.

The machine is microsoft free so its not that.

Its the difference in the values for different users and the fact that the time is correct, so long as I don't use a window manager, that makes me think its not "clock" related but rather how the clock is interpreted by X.

Maybe there are permission problems on some critical clock related file, although the /usr/share/zoneinfo & /etc/timezone files all look ok.

I just wish I knew which file to edit or which package to reinstall!

BTW which package contains hwclock?

Snowman · 2005-09-30 17:46:43

Have you tried with different WM to see if problem persist?
To get package containing hwclock:
whereis hwclock
pacman -Qo /path/to/hwclock

Cotton · 2005-09-30 18:23:21

Yes, its common across xfce4, fluxbox & icewm.

Cotton · 2005-11-05 15:28:25

FWIW the culprit was a line in my .bash_profile:

export TZ=EST5EDT

How that got there, I have no idea.

T-Dawg · 2005-11-05 19:36:28

So did that fix the different times in each console or the 5 hour offset?
I've never been able to get UTC to sync to my time zone. I was always under the impression it will only go to a standard UTC time no matter what. Is this true? If so can anyone tell me why in the world someone would want this?

cs25x · 2005-11-05 20:11:10

Pengiuin:
The entry in .bash_profile explains why it differed between root and a normal user. have you tried export TZ=your timezone whatever that is, in /etc/profile. are you using a valid timezone?

tzselect

Cotton · 2005-11-05 21:46:04

Penguin wrote:

So did that fix the different times in each console or the 5 hour offset?

Yes. Logging into a console as root gave the correct time. Logging into a console as a user gave the wrong time (due to the bash profile setting), which, after starting xce4/blackbox/kde was inherited by the X terminals both as user and as root. Hence the confusion.

T-Dawg · 2005-11-05 23:16:26

Ah, ok. Thanks guys. UTC does work for me. After doing alot of googling, I realized I was just confused by the concept of it and how to set it up.

Arch Linux

#1 2005-09-29 23:14:36

Annoying clock problems

#2 2005-09-30 07:43:19

Re: Annoying clock problems

#3 2005-09-30 15:43:33

Re: Annoying clock problems

#4 2005-09-30 17:46:43

Re: Annoying clock problems

#5 2005-09-30 18:23:21

Re: Annoying clock problems

#6 2005-11-05 15:28:25

Re: Annoying clock problems

#7 2005-11-05 19:36:28

Re: Annoying clock problems

#8 2005-11-05 20:11:10

Re: Annoying clock problems

#9 2005-11-05 21:46:04

Re: Annoying clock problems

#10 2005-11-05 23:16:26

Re: Annoying clock problems

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