Interesting Time issue in Linux.<-->
To complicate things a little, this was Redhat Enterprise Linux 4 update 2 in a VMware VM – reason why it makes it a little more complicated is because that there’s a time problem for Virtual Machines – in virtualization, you can’t afford to give the clock ticks that the older 2.6 kernels ask for (default 1000HZ). You can read more on it here: http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/resources/238.
So in this case, virtualization wasn’t the problem.
Here’s where I started:
ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Chicago /etc/localtime
date
Mon Feb 13 18:25:28 UTC 2006
ls -ld /etc/localtime
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 35 Feb 13 18:25 /etc/localtime -> /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Chicago
cat /etc/sysconfig/clock
ZONE=”America/Chicago”
UTC=false
ARC=false
run hwclock – it just gives you the prompt back.
date -s “Feb 13 20:25:28 PST 2006”
run date and get
Mon Feb 13 04:25:28 UTC 2006
run setup – go through the options set it to America/Chicago and still … UTC … why!?
set:
export TZ=America/chicago
still … date shows UTC!
reboot the Vm, go into the bios … same thing …. why!!??
zdump -v America/Chicago … shows a bunch of bullshit – nothing that helps.
finally:
rpm -qf /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Chicago
rpm –verify tzdata-2004e-2
S.5….T. /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Chicago
S.5….T. /usr/share/zoneinfo/CST6CDT
S.5….T. /usr/share/zoneinfo/SystemV/CST6CDT
S.5….T. /usr/share/zoneinfo/US/Central
ahh … wonder how the files got changed. Anyways, it doesn’t matter.
reinstalled rpm
rpm –force -Uvh tzdata-2004e-2.noarch.rpm
Now run:
ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Chicago /etc/localtime
Now the date’s okay … cool deal!