[geeks] DST hell

[der Mouse]

> It occurred to me yesterday that all these expensive patches on the
> 'nix boxes that don't run GMT

You mean there are any such?  I'd have trouble even deciding where to
start to set up a machine whose clock wasn't internally UTC (or GMT;
the difference between them is irrelevant for the purposes of this
message).  Certainly most time tools would be difficult to use, since
practically everything in every Unix variant I know of assumes the
system clock is in UTC/GMT and timezones are purely a presentation and
conversion issue.

> could all be boiled down to a cron script that's run twice a year
> that [adjusts for summer time].  Then have the desktop systems sync
> their time to one of those servers.  Am I I missing something here?

I suspect so.  You probably do not realize how Unix timekeeping works;
I suspect you do not quite grasp the difference between the system
clock and the presentation form handled by date(1) and related
programs.

I could be wrong.  It could be that you *do* understand it but still
propose to tell the userland timezone code it's running in UTC and then
jigger the system time to make that pseudo-UTC match local wall-clock
time.  If so, all I can say is, well, it'll break the assumptions
underlying a lot of stuff, and thus stands a good chance of breaking
the stuff.  Certainly almost any tool for syncing your own clock to an
external standard will get upset, since they are all built for the
"system timekeeping is UTC" model.

> Why is this so hard?

See above.

If you're still not convinced, well, try it.  Perhaps I'm wrong.

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