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Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mailrus!nrl-cmf!ames!oliveb!pyramid!voder!tolerant!kennedy
From: kennedy@tolerant.UUCP (Bill Kennedy)
Newsgroups: news.software.b,comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: Timezone trouble in inews, smail...
Message-ID: <1439@tolerant.UUCP>
Date: 22 Mar 88 17:04:13 GMT
References: <175@octopus.UUCP>
Reply-To: kennedy@tolerant.UUCP (Bill Kennedy)
Followup-To: bill@ssbn.WLK.COM (Bill Kennedy)
Distribution: na
Organization: Tolerant Systems Inc., San Jose
Lines: 44
Keywords: Gotta use tzset more
Summary: How to avoid EST

In article <175@octopus.UUCP> pete@octopus.UUCP (Pete Holzmann) writes:
>As a non-source-licensed uucp site, we've had to live with the sad fact that
>our particular Unix is configured with a default east coast timezone. That's
[ discussion and symptoms of the problem deleted ]

The problem lies in the default environment that is inherited by cron and his
friends.  There are several ways around it.  For cron you can make sure that
he gets an environment with TZ set correctly before it starts from /etc/rcxxx
or restarts (my system kills and restarts cron daily as part of clean up).

That doesn't help you with uucico or others that don't necessarily have an
environment where TZ is guaranteed.  To solve those you can write a dirt
simple little program that puts the appropriate TZ stuff in a string
variable and execve to the original binary that didn't have one.  The same
could be done with a script.  We renamed the "real" uucico to uucico.exec
and the front end program uucico.  All it did was get TZ right and pass it
to uucico.exec.  There's probably a more elegant way to do it but I know
that either of these will work.

>	- I don't find any calls to tzset in the news software. Yet sometimes
>		inews gets the time zone right in the log file. So clearly
>		I don't have the whole picture. Maybe somebody with source can
>		grep for a better answer.

Any program who has an appropriate environment will get it right.  If you are
in doubt about who does and doesn't you can schedule them out of at or cron
and send the date output to a log file and see if it comes up with EST (no
environment) or PST (desired environment) and adjust accordingly.

>	- Where else do I need to set up the correct time zone? I have it in
>		/.profile (set TZ...), and in /etc/timezone. (This is V.2
>		with some Berkeleyisms added).

The /etc/profile is only valid for user logins that execute a shell.  The
uucp logins go through uucico (default environment) and depending on how
you are doing news, you are getting uuxqt's environment or cron's.  I can
send you some code fragments to make it what you want but I think you can
see where I am going.  I would *not* recommend that you use a script to get
to uucico, a binary is easier to control.

The opinions are my own, Tolerant is nice enough to let me use their equipment
so don't blame me on them.

Bill Kennedy {rutgers,cbosgd,ihnp4!petro}!ssbn!bill or bill@ssbn.WLK.COM