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Message-ID: <20110929165832.GC31661@openwall.com>
Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2011 20:58:32 +0400
From: croco@...nwall.com
To: owl-dev@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: Re: timezones
On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 08:21:03PM +0400, Solar Designer wrote:
> Hi,
>
> What we may do for our older glibc is take the Etc/GMT-4 file, change
> the name inside it from GMT-4 to MSD, and replace the Europe/Moscow file
I don't think it is good to change the name. MSD means 'Moscow
Daylight-saving', and everyone knows this particular meaning, so this can
confuse people.
What name to use, then -- is another problem.
> with that. (I just did on my computer - seems to work as desired.)
> But there are too many affected per-city timezone files, I'm afraid.
>
> Or maybe we should back-port whatever fix upstream glibc uses.
>
> Also, this brings up a more general issue, not specific to these
> countries and this year. In owl-setup, we skip these timezone files:
>
> if(ents.HasPrefix("GMT+") ||
> ents.HasPrefix("GMT-") ||
>
> This is because these timezones are historically confusingly named - the
> opposite from what one would expect (the timezone file Etc/GMT-4 is
> actually for four hours ahead of GMT).
Surprisingly enough, this is still the case in the distros I've got handy
(besides Owl, these are Ubuntu and Debian), AND they do precisely the same
things for UTC+n/UTC-n. Isn't it may be the time to break this weird
tradition, heh? Or may be invent some new names, e.g. GMTZ+/GMTZ-? (for
Greenwich Meridian Time _Z_one) (for those who in doubt: it is okay to have
more than 3 chars in the name, see, e.g., ALMT).
> However, it'd be nice for
> owl-setup to let one configure the system's timezone as GMT or UTC
> offset. Any suggestions on how to do that best?
We can add another menu item, such as 'specify the time zone offset
manually'.
--
Croco
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