"appropriate" system time / timezone settings

[Thomas Cameron]

On Tue, 2004-12-07 at 05:39 +0000, Trevor Smith wrote:
> (You can skip the preamble and just read the last sentence/question if you're 
> short on time.)
> 
> I had thought that the standard way to set up a linux system was to set the 
> system time to the UTC (or Greenwich mean time or whatever) and set the 
> appropriate TZ variable.
> 
> I just realized that my system is not set like that. Or at least it does not 
> appear to be.
> 
> I was setting up a GPG key on my girlfriend's computer (in the same house) and 
> emailed a bit back and forth. She noted that my messages were coming through 
> to her as being sent 4 hrs earlier than the current time. Then I couldn't 
> import her GPG key because GPG said it was created about 4 hrs in the future 
> (from my system's perspective).
> 
> Now, I realized that my system is in AST, which is -0400 from UTC or Greenwich 
> (which is it anyway?) so that explained that. I set my time clock to be UTC, 
> then selected the Show Timezone->America/Halifax setting from the clock 
> applet in my KDE launchbar but...
> 
> As you'll see from this email, my emails are now being reported as having been 
> sent at 5something am (currently). Indeed, viewing the headers of my emails 
> to myself shows:
> 
> Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 05:31:25 +0000
> 
> This should be:
> 
> Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 05:31:25 -0400
> or would that be:
> Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 01:31:25 -0400
> ?
> 
> Anyway, KMail has no way to set the TZ variable that I can find, and I'm sure 
> it's supposed to be system-wide anyway.
> 
> Any suggestions about where/what I'm missing? Where can I set the TZ variable 
> (or whatever it's called)?

system-config.time will do it for you.  It will set the time zone
in /etc/sysconfig/clock.

You can also run the ntp service to keep your system fairly well
synchronized to the atomic clock or other reliable time source.

Thomas