How do I permanently set the Time Zone in Templates & AppVMs?

[Richard H]

Although the date and time for dom0 shows my current time zone and survives reboots, the time zones in my Fedora Templates and AppVM's keep reverting back to UTC time whenever the VM and/or computer is restarted.

When I change the time zone manually in the Date & Time area for each Template and AppVM, the time zone only works for the current session and does not survive a restart.  Setting the Automatic Time Zone feature sets the time to UTC. 

I understand that Linux resets the BIOS clock to UTC and it is suggested that one should not override that setting.  Having said that, I have manually changed the BIOS time but it does not help because the program keeps overriding my changes.

How do I change the time zone in the Templates & VM such that they survive a restart and are not reset to UTC?

OS: Qubes 3.0 rc2

Kind regards,

Richard

[Marek Marczykowski-Górecki]

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Timezone for VMs should be automatically copied from dom0 at VM startup.
You can check the actual value retrieved from dom0 - in the VM check the
following command:
qubesdb-read /qubes-timezone

If that returns UTC instead of your timezone, the problem is at dom0
side. Otherwise somehow VM ignores this setting (or misinterpret it).

- --
Best Regards,
Marek Marczykowski-Górecki
Invisible Things Lab
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
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[Richard H]

Thanks Marek for the reply,

While the command you provided correctly shows my time zone in each of the VMs, the time is not always shown correct within the VM (for example Gmail running in Chrome shows UTC).

This morning when I open up my VMs I am getting a new system message that my time zone is reset to my time zone.  However, this only happens where the time zone was set to automatic.  For those that had the time zone manually set, it remains on UTC even though the command you provided correctly shows my time zone.

Kind regards, 

Richard

[Marek Marczykowski-Górecki]

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> Thanks Marek for the reply,
>
> While the command you provided correctly shows my time zone in each of the
> VMs, the time is not always shown correct within the VM (for example Gmail
> running in Chrome shows UTC).
>
> This morning when I open up my VMs I am getting a new system message that
> my time zone is reset to my time zone. However, this only happens where
> the time zone was set to automatic. For those that had the time zone
> manually set, it remains on UTC even though the command you provided
> correctly shows my time zone.

Can you identify what showed you a message about resetting the time
zone? Maybe some gnome-settings-daemon related tool?
I think this is the problem - Qubes scripts properly setup time zone,
but later, some tool mess with the settings.

- --
Best Regards,
Marek Marczykowski-Górecki
Invisible Things Lab
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
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[Richard H]

It pops up shortly after I start a VM in the top right-hand corner of the screen. Here is a screen capture of it:

​

If I click on the Settings button, it opens the AppVM's Date & Time settings window.

The message only appears when I set the Date & Time time zone to automatic, if it is set to manual I do not see the message.

As far as I know, I have not changed or used any gnome-settings-daemon related tool. I am not sure how I can identify it any further.  If you have suggestions, please let me know.

Thanks,

Richard