Setting the hardware clock to UTC
Rick and Sue Deschene
system: Win98, SuSE 7.2 Haven't been into Win98 in a month, but I gave
it a try.
In Win98, if I right click on the clock, and change the clock to the
timezone and daylight savings selection I want, then reboot, I can now
enter the CMOS settings during startup (e.g. by hitting <DEL> right
after the memory count, on my PC) and set the time to (e.g.) 17:27hrs.
I then save these settings, and exit the CMOS and complete re-booting
WIN98. The clock on the taskbar shows the right hardware time, and when
I check the timezone that is correct too.
Hope this helps,
Rick D.
"Dominik M. Liebich" wrote:
>
> Hello everybody!
>
> I am using both, Windows 98 and SuSE 7.3, on one computer. The hardware
> clock is set to my local timezone (Europe/Berlin, UTC +1) so that Windows
> shows the correct time. I wonder if (and how) it is possible to set the
> hardware clock to UTC and make *Windows* show the correct time. Can anyone
> prvide information?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Dominik
>
> PS: I know that this question deals with Windows but I thought, experienced
> Linux/Unix users might know a solution. Anyhow, I apologize in advance,
> don't flame :-)
Robert Davies
> Hello everybody!
>
> I am using both, Windows 98 and SuSE 7.3, on one computer. The hardware
> clock is set to my local timezone (Europe/Berlin, UTC +1) so that Windows
> shows the correct time. I wonder if (and how) it is possible to set the
> hardware clock to UTC and make *Windows* show the correct time. Can anyone
> prvide information?
Yes, move to the UK.
It works for about half of the year ;)
ROb
Ferdinand Gassauer
>> In Win98, if I right click on the clock, and change the clock to the
>> timezone and daylight savings selection I want, then reboot, I can now
>> enter the CMOS settings during startup (e.g. by hitting <DEL> right
>> after the memory count, on my PC) and set the time to (e.g.) 17:27hrs.
>
> Yes, but your hardware clock is now set to your local time. These are my
> current settings, too. But I want to set the hardware clock to UTC.
>
>> I then save these settings, and exit the CMOS and complete re-booting
>> WIN98. The clock on the taskbar shows the right hardware time, and when
>> I check the timezone that is correct too.
>
> Linux will get my local time by adding one hour (in my case!) to hardware
> time. Windows cannot do this - it will show the hardware time (which would
> be UTC) and tell me that this was my local time. Example: If it was 18:00
> CET, my hardware-clock would be set to 17:00 (UTC). Linux would take 17:00
> *UTC*, add one hour (CET = UTC + 1) and show 18:00 *CET*. Windows would
> behave different: It would take the hardware clock's time and tell me that
> it was 17:00 CET because I haven't found any possibility to tell Windows
>
> 1) my local time-zone AND
> 2) whether the hardware clock is set to local time or to UTC
>
> I hope now my problem became clear enough...
>
>> Hope this helps,
>> Rick D.
>
> Sorry, not really. But anyhow: Thank you, Rick!
>
> Dominik
>
>
>
use webmin
http://www.webmin.com/
cu
ferdinand
Tim Prince
> Hello everybody!
>
> I am using both, Windows 98 and SuSE 7.3, on one computer. The hardware
> clock is set to my local timezone (Europe/Berlin, UTC +1) so that Windows
> shows the correct time. I wonder if (and how) it is possible to set the
> hardware clock to UTC and make *Windows* show the correct time. Can anyone
> prvide information?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Dominik
>
> PS: I know that this question deals with Windows but I thought,
> experienced Linux/Unix users might know a solution. Anyhow, I apologize in
> advance, don't flame :-)
No, you must use the hardware clock set to local when you have Windows
installed, unless you want Windows to display UTC. The more different OS
you have installed, the more likely it is that your clock will be set ahead
or back too often on the summer/winter time changes. That's one of the
aspects of Windows "not supporting" dual boot. Believe it or not, I'm in
the same state as MS HQ, and it's not one of those no time change states.
--
Tim Prince
Juergen Pfann
>
> No, you must use the hardware clock set to local when you have Windows
> installed, unless you want Windows to display UTC. The more different OS
> you have installed, the more likely it is that your clock will be set ahead
> or back too often on the summer/winter time changes. That's one of the
> aspects of Windows "not supporting" dual boot.
Yes, all versions of Windows _always_ assume the RTC is set to your
local time, and there's no way to change this assumption; thus the
timezone adjustment in fact is only relevant for the hour of daylight
saving time changes - what a silly concept...
BTW : Even some PC Unices like SCO Open Server and Unixware seem to
behave similarly (or, I didn't find out some environment variable to
tell to the OS that RTC is UTC...), while the *BSDs and Linux leave it
to the user, if the RTC runs UTC or local time.
Hence, on 4 boxes in my LAN all doing not dual but multi boot - from
3 to currently 18 LILO entries -, clearly the less hassle is to have the
HW clock run in UTC...
O.K., the "sillier" OSes have a "time shift" if I use UTC for them,
but at least they leave the HW clock alone throughout the year...
(One of my PCs has a little BIOS bug, the RTC sometimes jumps back
to Jan 1, 1999, upon next reboot, after fiddling with it from within
the OS - sigh ).
As the shift is only 1 or 2 hours, resp., I can live with that.
AND : apart from no need to adjust the clock twice a year, there's
another _advantage_ of this policy : the timestamps of files
created or modified while under Win are displayed _correctly_,
if I'm back in Linux on the mounted VFAT file system ;-)).
Apparently, Windows does use *UTC* for files' and directories'
timestamps, which will be displayed to the correct local time
from within Linux; the timestamps would be _wrong_ on a
"HW clock is local time" system...
Juergen
Robert Davies
> Tim Prince wrote:
>>
>> No, you must use the hardware clock set to local when you have Windows
>> installed, unless you want Windows to display UTC. The more different OS
>
> Yes, all versions of Windows _always_ assume the RTC is set to your
> local time, and there's no way to change this assumption; thus the
To be fair to M$loth, VMS also also suffered from this apparently simpler
choice, which is strange in a multi-user, multi-tasking system supporting
remote logins.
> AND : apart from no need to adjust the clock twice a year, there's
> another _advantage_ of this policy : the timestamps of files
> created or modified while under Win are displayed _correctly_,
> if I'm back in Linux on the mounted VFAT file system ;-)).
> Apparently, Windows does use *UTC* for files' and directories'
> timestamps, which will be displayed to the correct local time
> from within Linux; the timestamps would be _wrong_ on a
> "HW clock is local time" system...
Now doesn't that show why, the simple approach fails and is actually a
design error. Windows gains nothing from having the RTC set to local time,
as it must either use UTC internally, or be constantly having to convert
between UTC and localtime.
If you use localtime for filesystems, you get some fun anomalies once a
year when clocks go back, and you also have problems with network
filesystems, where files may have access or modification times in the
future.
Rob