Time issue on Bubba Two

bk · Post by bk » 14 Mar 2009, 05:44

I have a problem with the time on Bubba Two. Comparing CET and UTC time, I get:

bubba:~# date ; date -u
Sat Mar 14 10:32:47 CET 2009
Sat Mar 14 09:33:10 UTC 2009

So the local time is 59 minutes and 37 seconds from UTC instead of the expected one hour.

It seems that this might be due to some leap second issue, but I have not quite been able to figure out what is going on.

This may seem like a minor issue, but it is apparently the only thing stopping me from getting MythTV to work on Bubba. For MythTV to work, it is necessary that the time zones on the backend and the frontend match right down to the second. (I will post a howto on MythTV once I get it to work).

Any help is appreciated.

davidI · Post by **davidI** » 14 Mar 2009, 11:51

This is bizarre - mine is also adrift by exactly 23 seconds. Given that CET is defined as UTC + 1 hour there should be no difference in the seconds or minutes values.

Code: Select all

bubba:~$ date ; date -u
Sat Mar 14 16:44:09 CET 2009
Sat Mar 14 15:44:32 UTC 2009

peter · Post by **peter** » 14 Mar 2009, 15:03

I had the same problem.
I think I fixed it by removing the existing link of /etc/localtime.

Mine is now linked to

Code: Select all

ls -l /etc/localtime 
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 36 Feb 23 10:36 /etc/localtime -> /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Amsterdam

Amsterdam is chosen because I live in The Netherlands.

date ; date -u
Sat Mar 14 20:00:19 CET 2009
Sat Mar 14 19:00:19 UTC 2009

Please let me know if I am correct.

bk · Post by bk » 14 Mar 2009, 15:10

Yes that works. Thanks a lot.

davidI · Post by **davidI** » 15 Mar 2009, 06:12

Works for me too - thanks.

Please note Excito:
After the manual fix recommended here the colcks are correct, but if I go the bubba administration interface the date and time page says that the timezone is UTC. Using this interface to set the timezone to CET again results in the 23 secs difference. Excito: please fix the admin interface.

RobV · Post by **RobV** » 15 Mar 2009, 07:46

Thanks Peter.
It even works for me

pa · Post by pa » 18 Mar 2009, 16:15

Hi,

The case with the clock being 23s off to the UTC is due to the consideration of leapseconds. The local time shown by bubba is taking this into account, that is why the clock is 23s "off".

If you do not wish to use this, change the link as shown above and avoid setting the timezone in the UI.

/PA

bk · Post by bk » 18 Mar 2009, 16:58

Thanks. According to Wikipedia, UTC also has leapseconds included, wheres TAI does not (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinated_Universal_Time). So it seems to me that there should still be exactly an hour difference. But I am no expert on these matters.