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From: vjs@rhyolite.wpd.sgi.com (Vernon Schryver)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: Re: NFS problems...
Summary: probably timezone
Message-ID: <77602@sgi.sgi.com>
Date: 10 Dec 90 17:44:45 GMT
References: <1990Dec10.163637@anusf.anu.oz.au>
Sender: guest@sgi.sgi.com
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA
Lines: 32

In article <1990Dec10.163637@anusf.anu.oz.au>, drw900@anusf.anu.oz.au ("Drew R Whitehouse") writes:
> 
> 	I've got a weird thing happening with NFS mounted file
> systems. I'm mounting a file system from a Sun 4/330 SunOS4.1 onto a
> 4D210/VGX 3.3.1. Everything works fine except when I write a file onto
> the nfs f.s., it's dated an hour behind...The time is right on the sun
> and the sg, writing a file on the sg's own disks works as expected. It
> used to work...I don't know exactly when it stopped. Maybe it's
> something to do with NFS ?? daylight saving ?? Any suggestions
> welcome....
> 
> (One thing I've noticed - touch updates the date correctly,
> things like editors and compilers (.c -> .o) don't.)


It would probably be effective to follow your daylight savings idea.
IRIX and SunOS keep time in GMT, and convert to human readable form.
If the two systems had different notions of the timezone (e.g.
differing ideas of whether daylight savings is in effect), one would
see the effects you report.  The NFS server is responsible for chosing
mtime in normal writes and creates.  It seems right that setattrib()
passes all of the times over the wire.  Thus, touch might have
a different effect.

On an IRIS or other SV system, the TZ env. variable controls the decoding
of the kernel's idea of time.  `(unsetenv TZ; date)` will display the
unvarnished date and time.  Something similar might be available on the Sun.
On an IRIS, try `man timezone`.



Vernon Schryver,   vjs@sgi.com