Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!apple!phil
From: phil@Apple.COM (Phil Ronzone)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.aux
Subject: Re: Can A/UX tell time (correctly)?
Keywords: time, PST, PDT, GMT, clock
Message-ID: <25736@apple.Apple.COM>
Date: 13 Feb 89 18:06:22 GMT
References: <521@ivucsb.UUCP>
Organization: Apple Computer A/UX Group
Lines: 30

In article <521@ivucsb.UUCP> lemke@apple.ucsb.edu writes:
>After reading the man page on setmactime, I was under the impression that
>A/UX realized that the time in the (battery backed up) system clock in the
>Mac II is my local (PST/PDT/whatever) time, and that it needed to adjust
>according to the environment variable TZ to figure out GMT - which is what
>it likes to tell time in.  Then, it should be able to use TZ to tell ME
>what time it is in my local time....

The environment variables, such as TZ, are for telling the system to
DISPLAY time in your time zone format (remember, user xyz can be logged
into your system from around the world -- and that user would set TZ to
something else).

The one extra step, (it's in the manual) is to tell the system how
far the local clock is from UTC/GMT -- the "GMT" bias. This is how many
minutes your are "from" GMT. For example, here in CA, we are -480 minutes.
This is all required because the Mac OS keeps the battery backup up clock chip
in local time. We keep the GMT bias in PRAM, so, once set, it will be
used across reboots.


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