Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Walt H · Posted: Wed 15 Jun 2005, 00:34 Post subject: Set time/date utility buggy?

When I go into Puppy's menu and select 'Set time/date' from the Command Panel, I find it doesn't work right and doesn't appear to save the settings when/if I finally do get things set. It defaults to the year 2010, and if you try to reset it, you more often than not end up only being able to cycle between 1971 and 1999.

The day and time often skip several numbers at a time, even if you are very careful. I had to go backward and forward several times before I got the day and time correctly set.

Last night, I had everything set just right and saved those settings, or so I thought. Tonight, the time reset and the year changed back to 2010.

Is there a file somewhere I can edit to set these manually somehow? Also, I notice that the 'Set timezone' menu item does not include my timezone (U.S. Mountain Time - think Denver, Colorado), which I believe should be GMT -7 according to the utility. There is GMT -8 (Los Angeles) and GMT -6 (Mexico City), but no GMT -7. Or is GMT -8 incorrectly labeled? (My first thought)

Catlover · Guest

To adjust date and time if you have a mouse with wheel use wheel to set time and date

Flash · Posted: Wed 15 Jun 2005, 12:19 Post subject: Re: Problem setting date and time.

Seems to me I had a similar problem. I can't remember what I did to get my time/date correct, but it's OK now. Sorry. Embarassed

I've noticed that several Linux distributions I tried didn't save the time correctly when they rebooted. Or at least they didn't save it the way I expected them to. I would set the time and then the next time I booted it would be off seven hours or so. I finally noticed that it happened if I had booted Windows in the meantime. There seems to be some difference between the way Windows sets the BIOS time from your time zone and the way Linux does it.

I know this has nothing to do with your problem but I thought I'd say it. Smile

GuestToo · Puppy Master Joined: 04 May 2005 Posts: 4078

as far as i know, the Set Timezone Wizard has the offsets reversed

in other words, New York City would be +5 ... Denver would be +7 ... Los Angeles would be +8

you may have to change the timezone manually when daylight savings time changes

the timezone information is partly saved in the file /etc/TZ

i edited TZ and typed in the correct information for my time zone ... EST5EDT ... EST stands for Eastern Standard Time ... EDT stands for Eastern Daylight Time ... 5 (+5) is the time zone offset ... so when i type "date", it says my time zone is EST (actually, it says my time zone is EDT right now)

for Denver, it would be MST7MDT (an offset of +7)

see: http://www.die.net/doc/linux/man/man8/hwclock.8.html
and http://www.die.net/doc/linux/man/man3/tzset.3.html