Hi.
My original questions:
>> Hi.
>>
>> I'm using a perl module which needs to determine my
>> timezone. It first tests the variable TZ, if that is not
>> defined, it checks of /etc/TIMEZONE exists, if so, it does:
>>
>> grep ^TZ /etc/TIMEZONE
>>
>>
>> Now, my /etc/TIMEZONE file is empty, which causes the above
>> grep to return nil, which causes the perl program to fail. Of
>> course, one could expect the perl program to check if it gets
>> something reasonable back from the grep, but that is not the
>> point, because if /etc/TIMEZONE doesn't exist, it uses GMT,
>> which is not correct.
>>
>> So, my questions are:
>>
>> 1. should /etc/TIMEZONE be empty, and if not, what should it
>> contain.
>>
>> 2. how do I set TZ to the " correct vaule". By this I mean, if
>> I do date, I get
>>
>> Sun Oct 13 11:09:09 IST 1996
>>
>>
>> which correctly shows IST. Thus, the system knows that my
>> timezone is IST. In order to get the perl program to also know
>> this, I must either get this info into /etc/TIMEZONE, or into
>> TZ. Of course, I realize that I can simply put TZ=IST;export TZ
>> into my .profile (that's what I'm doing now), but I do not want
>> to require each user on my system to do that - it should be set
>> on a system level.
>>
>> I just noticed that /etc/profile contains the line
>> . /etc/TIMEZONE. Does that mean that I should put the command
>>
>> TZ=IST;export TZ
>>
>> in /etc/TIMEZONE ?
>>
>> If so, how do I do that for all the different shells ?
>>
>> Otherwise, do I have to put the correct command in each shells
>> initialization file (using the appropriate syntax) ?
>>
Answers:
>>>>> "Harald" == Harald Lundberg <hl_at_tekla.fi> writes:
>> 1. should /etc/TIMEZONE be empty, and if not, what should it
>> contain.
Harald> DU uses an alternate (better) method. Actually most Unixes
Harald> use this newer method nowadays, but I think TZ will
Harald> override. So don't set TZ. If you just want to find out
Harald> the name of the timezone, use 'date +%Z'. The timezone is
Harald> set by creating a link called 'localtime' in
Harald> /etc/zoneinfo, pointing to a timezone file (binary,
Harald> compiled with zic, sources are in the sources/
Harald> subdirectory).
Summary:
1. /etc/TIMEZONE should be empty - see above.
2. can use TZ=`date +%Z` in each shell's startup file
(.profile)
3. I wrote to the author of the perl script which was giving
me problems - he added the `date +%Z` code to the script.
Thanks also to:
>>>>> "Serge" == Serge Munhoven <munhoven_at_olive.msm.ulg.ac.be> writes:
>>>>> "Tom" == Tom Rioux <rioux_at_ip6480nl.ce.utexas.edu> writes:
>>>>> "Steve" == Steve Thompson <smt_at_NICS1.CORNING.COM>
>>>>> "skinner" == skinner <skinner_at_zko.dec.com>
--
The day is short, and the work is great, | Aharon Schkolnik
and the laborers are lazy, and the reward | Aharon_at_Matat.Health.Gov.IL
is great, and the Master of the house is |
impatient. - Ethics Of The Fathers Ch. 2 |
Received on Sun Oct 27 1996 - 15:46:50 NZDT