From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Mar 28 18:54:46 2011 Return-Path: Delivered-To: hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0BDBE1065670 for ; Mon, 28 Mar 2011 18:54:46 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from reichert@numachi.com) Received: from meisai.numachi.com (meisai.numachi.com [198.175.254.6]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 5E9878FC18 for ; Mon, 28 Mar 2011 18:54:45 +0000 (UTC) Received: (qmail 36259 invoked by uid 1001); 28 Mar 2011 18:28:03 -0000 Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2011 14:28:03 -0400 From: Brian Reichert To: Garrett Cooper Message-ID: <20110328182803.GF86409@numachi.com> References: <8CDBB88B5271976-11D4-322B@web-mmc-d02.sysops.aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.9i Cc: hackers@freebsd.org, dieterbsd@engineer.com Subject: Re: Keeping /etc/localtime up-to-date X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2011 18:54:46 -0000 On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 11:10:42AM -0700, Garrett Cooper wrote: > On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 10:57 AM, wrote: > > I have been running FreeBSD and NetBSD with /etc/localtime being > > a symlink for years and have not seen any problems as a result. > > +1. Many Linux distros do the same thing as well (Gentoo is just one example). RedHat is a counter-example. Parts of the kernel are not timezone aware, and seem to be hard-coded to use whatever TZ the hardware clock is in. The symptom I was running into was that the kernel's timestamps were waffling back-and-forth during the boot process. I was making use of a symlink, but the timezone data was on a different partition from the root parition. RedHat's support officially said "don't use a symlink", as any process started before the 'real' TZ files were available would reckon time differently when printing timestamps. Lots of people got bit by this: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=91228 YMMV. > Thanks, > -Garrett > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-hackers-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" -- Brian Reichert BSD admin/developer at large