Ubuntu doesn't correct for daylight savings (DST), if clock set to local time

[Adrian Macneil]

I'm in New Zealand (GMT+12), and last night daylight savings removed an hour (to GMT+13). However, the system time did not automatically update.

To fix the problem, I installed NTP and had it synchronise from the internet servers. However, this shouldn't be necessary (some people don't have always-on internet, and it is a fairly easy task for Ubuntu to do)

I see this as a threat to Ubuntu's mostly well-polished look and feel. Windows has been able to do this since at least Windows 95.

This is related to bug #37836, Ubuntu should notify the user when the clock has been updated. However, on my system, possibly due to the lack of NTP, the clock did not update in the first place.

Using Ubuntu Edgy 6.10, although http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-150472.html seems to suggest it occurs on Dapper as well.

[sam tygier (samtygier)]

can you post the output of
cat /etc/default/rcS

are you dual booting with windows?

in linux the clock can either be set to UTC or local time. if it is UTC the the local time is calculated based on your timezone settings, and is automatically adjusted for daylight saving. windows expects the time to be stored as local time, and adjusts the clock twice a year. if your clock is set to local time, then ubuntu does not adjust it, other wise the hour would be removed twice, once by linux and once by windows.

[Adrian Macneil (amacneil)]

Hi there, thanks for the help.

~$ cat /etc/default/rcS
#
# /etc/default/rcS
#
# Default settings for the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/
#
# For information about these variables see the rcS(5) manual page.
#
# This file belongs to the "initscripts" package.

TMPTIME=0
SULOGIN=no
DELAYLOGIN=no
UTC=no
VERBOSE=no
FSCKFIX=no

---

I am dual booting with windows, although I haven't used windows since the change so it hasn't updated my clock.

Ok, I didn't realise that. Not sure if that is a good behaviour though, because there must be plenty of people (like me) who have windows installed but use Ubuntu as their primary OS?

Maybe a better solution would be to popup a dialog on login saying that a DST has been detected, and present the user with two time options to choose from. Wouldn't be hard with a bit of python, although I wouldn't know how to get it to run only on certain dates.
Or would it make more sense to integrate it with the gnome-clock applet?

[sam tygier (samtygier)]

that could be a useful feature, pretty much what is described in Bug #37836 so i will close this bug.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for Ubuntu because there has been no activity for 60 days.]