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TITLE:          Time on LFS
LFS VERSIOM:    Any
AUTHOR:         Marc Heerdink <marc@linuxfromscratch.org>

SYNOPSIS:
        This is an in-depth explanation of timezones, UTC, the TZ environment variable and similar topics.

HINT:
version 2.1 (04/10/2002)

=================
TABLE OF CONTENTS
=================

1 Introduction
2 Local vs. UTC
3 Determining your timezone
4 Using the timezone
  4.1 Creating symlinks
  4.2 Changing bootscripts
      4.2.1 SYSV Init
      4.2.2 BSD Init
  4.3 TZ environment variable
5 Time synchronization
  5.1 Picking an NTP server
  5.2 Synchronize it
  5.3 Maintenance


===============
1. INTRODUCTION
===============

  Earth is divided in 24 time zones. The local time in a zone depends on how
many zones that zone is away from Greenwich, Great-Britain. The difference in
time is relative to the 0-zone over Greenwich. For example, in Holland (where I
live) we're in the +1-zone (that means, it's one hour later here than in Great
Britain). This compensates for the world turning.
  Your Linux system is multinational. It can not only talk different languages,
but it's aware of timezones too. This hint tells you how you can set it up.
  The second chapter of this hint is probably the most important one, the rest
of this hint depends on the choice you make in chapter 2. Good luck... :)

Send comments, suggestions, love-letters and improvements to:
Marc Heerdink <marc@linuxfromscratch.org>


================
2. LOCAL VS. UTC
================

  The first and most important question you'll have to answer is whether you
want to store the time in your machine in either UTC or local time format. UTC
is Greenwich time, local time is the time that is displayed on a clock hanging
on a wall near you (tm). Each format has it's own advantages and disadvantages,
but both of them are discussed in this hint.
  Traditionally, all POSIX machines (i.e. Solaris boxes, BSD Machines but Linux
boxes too) have their system time in UTC (Coördinated Universal Time) format.
Stupider OSes require their users to configure their machines for local time,
and these OSes are mainly the Microsoft ones. Fortunately, Linux can handle
both the normal UTC machines and the machines suffering from Microsoft diseases
that have their system time in local format. I still recommend UTC, that's the
way Linux was originally set up. Usage of local time is only a workaround.
  At this point, you'll have to decide what it's gonna be: local or UTC time.
Some guidelines: If you're running Windows and Linux together on 1 box, I
recommend you use local time, if you have Windows but you hardly use it or if
you don't have Windows at all, it's a good idea to store your time in UTC
format. Both ways are described here.


============================
3. DETERMINING YOUR TIMEZONE
============================

  Knowing what timezone you're living in, is important for the rest of this
hint. But it's not enough to know how many zones you're away from Greenwich,
since daylight saving is also influenced by this choice. LFS comes with an
easy program to determine your timezone in only a few questions (usually 2 or
3). Run it now:

 tzselect

  When this program quits, the last line it prints is your timezone. Here, it
prints "Europe/Amsterdam" (without the quotes) because I live in the
Netherlands. Remember this value; write it down or put it somewhere in a text
file. This variable will be referenced to as _TIMEZONE_ in the rest of this
hint to simplify explanations.


=====================
4. USING THE TIMEZONE
=====================

  Now that you know what timezone you're living in, we can put this knowledge
into practice. This chapter deals with the various ways a timezone needs to be
set up. Each subchapter describes what we're going to do and tells you how. I
assume you're using a virgin LFS installation. Otherwise, you'll have to do
some improvisation.


=====================
4.1 CREATING SYMLINKS
=====================

  These are symlinks that have to be present, this is not different for either
people with local time or people with UTC time. Why these symlinks have to be
created, will be explained in chapter 4.2. For now, just enter the
/usr/share/zoneinfo directory and create a symlink from localtime to your
timezone with the following command:

 cd /usr/share/zoneinfo &&
 ln -sf _TIMEZONE_ localtime

  Chapter 3 describes this _TIMEZONE_ thingie. Read it if you didn't already do
so, it contains importand information. Next, we need another sylink in /etc:

 cd /etc &&
 ln -sf ../usr/share/zoneinfo/localtime

  The symlinks are now set up, changing bootscripts is next.


========================
4.2 CHANGING BOOTSCRIPTS
========================

  At boot time, the system clock that is maintained by the Linux kernel, has
to be synchronized to the hardware clock. The hardware clock is the clock that
ticks in your BIOS and keeps the time even if the system is powered time. The
reason to do so, is that the hardware clock is not really precise. The Linux
kernel uses a far more precise way of time keeping, that I'm not going to
describe in detail here. To keep the Linux system time when the system goes
down, the system time has to be written to the hardware clock when the system
is going to reboot or power down.
  Writing to the hardware clock and reading from it is performed by a program
named hwclock(8). This program is part of a normal LFS system, so you don't
need to download it. We'll modify some of the bootscripts to make this program
run at power up and power down.
  This chapter describes the changes that have to be made to either the SYSV
bootscrips that are described in the book, or to the BSD style bootscripts
that are described in the BSD Init hint. If you don't know what type you have,
you can assume you're using the SYSV type bootscripts.


===============
4.2.1 SYSV INIT
===============

  In the book, a script named setclock is created in /etc/init.d/setclock is
created. This script performs only half of the job, because it only sets the
system time from the hardware clock. We will modify this script and create
some additional symlinks to make this script save the system time to the
hardware clock if needed. But first, you'll have to check if the
/etc/sysconfig/clock file is correct. This file defines a variable UTC. What
value this variable gets, is pretty self-explanatory after reading chapter 2.
Summarized: UTC=1 for UTC hardware clocks, UTC=0 for localtime clocks. Next:
we create a new /etc/init.d/setclock:

 rm -f /etc/init.d/setclock
 cat >/etc/init.d/setclock <<EOF
#!/bin/sh
# Begin /etc/init.d/setclock

#
# Include the functions declared in the /etc/init.d/functions file
# and include the variables from the /etc/sysconfig/clock file
#

source /etc/init.d/functions
source /etc/sysconfig/clock

case "$1" in
        start)
                case "$UTC" in
                        yes|true|1)
                                /sbin/hwclock --hctosys --utc
                        ;;
                        no|false|0)
                                /sbin/hwclock --hctosys --localtime
                        ;;
                        *)
                                echo "Invalid value for UTC in /etc/sysconfig/clock: $UTC"
                                echo "Valid values for UTC are 1 and 0."
                                exit 1
                        ;;
                esac
        ;;
        stop)
                case "$UTC" in
                        yes|true|1)
                                /sbin/hwclock --systohc --utc
                        ;;
                        no|false|0)
                                /sbin/hwclock --systohc --localtime
                        ;;
                        *)
                                echo "Invalid value for UTC in /etc/sysconfig/clock: $UTC"
                                echo "Valid values for UTC are 1 and 0."
                                exit 1
                        ;;
                esac
        ;;
        *)
                echo "Usage: $0 {start|stop}"
                exit 1
        ;;
esac

# End /etc/init.d/setclock
EOF
 chmod 755 /etc/init.d/setclock

  Next are the symlinks. The symlink to run the setclock script is already
present in /etc/init.d/rcS.d, so the only symlinks we have to create are the
ones to run setclock when the system shuts down:

 cd /etc/rc0.d &&
 ln -sf ../init.d/setclock S700setclock &&
 cd /etc/rc6.d &&
 ln -sf ../init.d/setclock S700setclock

  At this point, the bootscripts are correctly set up and the only thing that's
left to configure is the TZ environment variable in chapter 4.3.


==============
4.2.2 BSD INIT
==============

  The scripts are hwclock aware out of the box. The only thing you'll have to
change, are the parameters for hwclock in the /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit and
/etc/rc.d/rc.0 scripts. Open these scripts in a text editor and search for the
lines that call hwclock. These lines should look like

for UTC time:
(rc.sysinit) /sbin/hwclock --hctosys --utc
(rc.0)       /sbin/hwclock --systohc --utc

for local time:
(rc.sysinit) /sbin/hwclock --hctosys --localtime
(rc.0)       /sbin/hwclock --systohc --localtime

  And that's it!


===========================
4.3 TZ ENVIRONMENT VARIABLE
===========================

  This variable is used by hwclock when it's run from a shell, and some
programs that heavily depend on timezones. This variable is used system-wide,
so it's a good idea to have it in the system-wide environment that is set up in
/etc/profile. Add these lines to your /etc/profile:

 TZ=__TIMEZONE__
 export TZ


=======================
5. TIME SYNCHRONIZATION
=======================

  Time synchronization means "making your system display the correct time".
You'll learn how to synchronize your time with one of the NTP (Network Time
Protocol) servers out there and how to keep this time synchronized. In this
chapter, we'll use a handy utility named "getdate" to do the time
synchronization. Get it from:

 ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/network/misc/getdate_rfc868-1.2.tar.gz

  Now extract it in /usr/src:

 cd /usr/src &&
 tar xzvf /path/to/getdate_rfc868-1.2.tar.gz

  And compile it:

 cd getdate_rfc868 &&
 make &&
 make install &&
 make installman

  This is everything we need for time synchronization.


=========================
5.1 PICKING AN NTP SERVER
=========================

  This is the most difficult part of time synchronization. You need an NTP
server that is preferably in your timezone, and that is working. Pick one from
the list @ http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/clock1a.html. Test if it works
using:

 getdate your.ntp.server

  If you don't get a positive output, pick the next NTP server from the list and
try it again, otherwise, adjust your system time manually to a value as close as
possible to this ntp server. For example, if you get this:

 ntp.foo.bar.com:  (-40)  Sun Mar 4 13:33:33 2001

  Adjust your time with this command:

 date -s 13:33:40

  It's not really important yet what time exactly you set it to, but we need a
value that is close enough for getdate, since it won't work with a greater
difference between NTP and local time than 180 seconds.


==================
5.2 SYNCHRONIZE IT
==================

  Type this to synchronize your system time with the NTP server:

 getdate -adjust 5 180 your.ntp.server

  This is it! The correct time will be written to your hardware clock next time
your system shuts down (well... if you read chapter 4) so you'll have a quite
correct time for a few days. "A few days?!" Yes, because your hardware clock
isn't really precise. To make sure you always have the correct time, you'll have
to periodically synchronize it again. How this can be done will be explained in
chapter 5.3.


================
5.3 MAINTANTANCE
================

  You can keep your system clock in shape if you regularly synchronize your
local clock with an NTP server. It can be a good idea to do this every time you
connect to the internet, or (if you have a continuous connection) with a cron
job. If you don't like this automation, you can of course do it manually from
time to time. This chapter contains some examples for the given methods.
  First method is "synchronize when the internet link goes up." In this
example, the standard PPP daemon is used, because it's often used for serial
links. Open the file /etc/ppp/ip-up in a text editor. This file gets auto-
matically executed when the ppp link goes up so it's safe to synchronize from
here. Add this line to the end:

 /usr/bin/getdate -adjust 5 180 your.ntp.server

  The second method is "synchronize every x hours using a cron job." There are
too many cron daemons out there to give an example that works for every daemon.
Normally, the man page for the crontab editor you use will give you enough
information to be able to do this yourself. If you have made such a cronjob for
one particular cron daemon, please let me know and I'll add it here.
  The third and last "do it yourself"-method is pretty straightforward. Run the
familiar getdate -adjust line every once in a while...

__EOF__