tzconfig(8)

NAME

tzconfig - set the local timezone

SYNOPSIS

tzconfig

DESCRIPTION

This manual page explains how you can use the tzconfig

utility to set the local timezone. This is necessary to let your

system know about the difference between system time and local

time (the time in the real world). It is also necessary to make

your system behave nicely when your location uses Daylight Sav

ings Time.

A valid system time together with the correct local time

zone will give you best performance and highest reliability. It

is especially important in a network environment, where even

small time differences can make a mirror refetch a whole ftp

site, or where time stamps on external file systems are used.

tzconfig is called without any parameters from the shell.

First it presents the current setting and asks for verification

to change it.

You may press Ctrl-C to interrupt the script at any time.

After you made your choice, tzconfig will try to change

the timezone for you. See the Internals section below for techni

cal details. You must have root privileges to actually change

anything. Please use tzselect(1) as a user space command to just

look at the timezones. It will print the local time in any time

zone recognized by the system.

A WORD OF WARNING

What timezone is correct for your system? It depends on

the geographical location of the machine. Getting the correct

location is important, but the system must also know how your

hardware clock is set. Most DOS based PCs set their hardware

clock on Local Time, while most UNIX systems set their hardware

clock to UTC.

The Debian GNU/Linux system gains its knowledge of this

setting from the file /etc/default/rcS. This file contains ei

ther the line UTC=yes, which indicates that the hardware clock is

set to UTC, or it contains the line UTC=no, which declares the

hardware clock is set to Local Time. If these setting are cor

rect, and the hardware clock is truly set as indicated, then con

figuring the proper timezone for the machine will cause the prop

er date and time to be displayed. If these are not set correctly,

the the reported time will be quite incorrect. See hwclock(8) for

more details on this topic.

Internals

The work done by tzconfig is actually pretty simple. It

just copies the correct timezone installed in

/usr/share/zoneinfo/ to /etc/localtime and puts the name of the

timezone into /etc/timezone.

There is nothing wrong with doing this manually. However,

using tzconfig you don't have to remember the path to the time

zones.

FILES

/etc/timezone /etc/localtime /usr/share/zoneinfo

SEE ALSO

hwclock(8) tzselect(1) rcS(5)

AUTHOR

Copyright 1998 Marcus Brinkmann <brinkmd@debian.org> Ed

its Copyright 1998 Dale Scheetz <dwarf@polaris.net>

Please see nroff source for legal notice.

Debian 12 June 1998

TZCONFIG(8)