[kde-linux] clock off by an hour

[David Jarvie]

On Wed, October 28, 2009 3:28 am, tsuraan wrote:
> Ok, so it looks like the probem was a conflict between my
> /etc/localtime and KDE4's idea of what valid timezones are.  I noticed
> that system preferences doesn't list any of the US/* items that are in
> the zoneinfo, while my actual /etc/localtime is linked to
> /usr/share/zoneinfo/US/Central.  I guess that the discrepancy between
> KDE's idea of valid timezones and my current time zone was breaking
> things, so it decided to put me in Cancun.  I think there's probably a
> more graceful way to handle that case, but setting my /etc/localtime
> to America/Chicago instead of US/Central let KDE remember my timezone,
> which is good enough for me (although it is a few hundred miles off
> :).

In the standard time zone database on Linux, all time zones are named in
the form continent/city. So there are no US/... time zones - only
America/... ones. America/Chicago happens to be the name which is used in
the database for US central time, so that's the correct zone to choose
whether you live in Chicago or in Arkansas, Mississippi, etc.

When /etc/localtime pointed to US/Central, it wouldn't point to any valid
time zone data - it's strange that the system allowed the invalid link to
US/Central to be set up in the first place. Why it settled on Cancun, I
don't know, but it's not surprising that it had some unwanted effects.

-- 
David Jarvie.
KDE developer.
KAlarm author & maintainer.
http://www.astrojar.org.uk/kalarm