[RESOLVED] Time(zone) Problem

[dkeg]

Release is Spring rev2 (Gruffalo)
Okay, so even after the efforts (Thank you!!)of pidsley though IRC, and also alad, I cannot seem to get this fixed. Just noticed it this evening, but it definitely happened today some time. My output of date is all wrong. First off it display's UTC time instead of localtime. I have run /etc/tzdata, and dpkg-reconfigure tzdata, and cat /etc/timezone correctly display's America/New_York.

However when I run date, I get Sun Jul 6 03:41:45 America 2014, which right now its 23:42 EDT. So two things, why is it showing UTC time and not local, and two, why is it not displaying timezone, but Geographic location instead? That is probably why defaulting to UTC time.

If I run date +%Z I should get my timezone, EDT, but get America. Another thing of note, is when I reboot, and log back in, the correct timezone, date, and time show for my last login. But after that, its back to what I describe above.

I've tried everything I know or have found. Also tried to reinstall tzdata and booted a different kernel. We also tried removing /etc/localtime and pretty much starting over. I also tried a symlink from /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/New_York to /etc/localtime, and even tried echo "America/New_York" > /etc/timezone && dpkg-reconfigure -f noninteractive tzdata
Booting into a different partition/spin fixes it, so its specific to this spin. But I could change the bios settings time and date, which was UTC to localtime, which did fix time and date, but it still displayed America instead of EDT. Nothing changes that.

[machinebacon]

how about

Code: Select all

sudo hwclock --utc --debug --show
date

Edit: some interesting posts here: http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?t=48474

[dkeg]

thanks. same thing. pidsley also had suggested that. We had tried so many things, hard to remember them all. Also tried updating ntpd, but I don't think it has to do with that. For whatever reason it is America instead of the timezone.
hwclock from util-linux 2.20.1
Using /dev interface to clock.
Assuming hardware clock is kept in UTC time.
Waiting for clock tick...
...got clock tick
Time read from Hardware Clock: 2014/07/06 04:31:42
Hw clock time : 2014/07/06 04:31:42 = 1404621102 seconds since 1969
Sun 06 Jul 2014 04:31:42 AM America -0.891539 seconds

[machinebacon]

Do you actually have ntp running?

ntpdate pool.ntp.org

You could be really cheap and set the time zone with

Code: Select all

export TZ=EST

in .bashrc for example ;)

[machinebacon]

Oh and one more:

cat /etc/adjtime

make sure it is really UTC there

[dkeg]

no nothing changes. I can change tzdata to Asia, and it is still America as timezone and time as UTC. So where is it coming from?

Yes, I can change in .bashrc, and timezone does display as EDT, but time is still UTC

[dkeg]

as explained above, last login is correct, then all wrong from there. You can see I was messing around and set my tzdata to Asia, but timezone still says America

date.png (3.15 KiB) Viewed 2414 times

[machinebacon]

Isn't that managed via /etc/init.d/hwclock.sh ? Don't edit it, but take a look how it works. IIRC it gathers a few things and then sets the time zone.

I really have no idea what this all means. But googling this showed so many similar results (time plus x hours, next reboot it adds up again and again), ...

[dkeg]

I seemed to have resolved it with these steps, in this order.

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# set timezone
dpkg-reconfigure tzdata
# sync clock with network
ntpd -qg
# write current software clock to hardware clock
hwclock --systohc
reboot

So it seems everything we all did to try to fix was correct. Either I was not doing in the right order, or not rebooting immediately after, and instead messing up a potential fixed issue by running another command, like tzdata(?). I don't know, but it is resolved. I spent hours on it last night, and a couple hours this morning.

Seems the reason date was showing America was because the system was confused as hardware was set for localtime, system set for UTC.

Thank you Pidsley!, MB, and alad for taking time out to help me. I appreciate it.

[machinebacon]

^ Yeah, I saw a similar post saying that exactly the order does count, because hwclock saves the time at shutdown (!) -- guess that's why they placed it in /etc/init.d/

Step 16.2 -> http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/syste ... -time.html
says something similar. Ye good ole Administrator's Handbook ;)

[dkeg]

right, seems so much more clear now that I've spent the time diagnosing and investigating. First time is the hardest.