Joseph R. Junkin writes:
> What is the 'standard' timezone that people use for the email server?
>
> I am in CA and my server is in San Jose, each time I post a message to a
> mailing list, it appears with about a 2-3 hour time lag.
That's because your time and timezone settings are woefully broken.
Your clock is off by three hours, and your timezone setting is also off by
three hours, but in another direction, so they cancel out on your local
machine.
Meanwhile, to everyone else, you're three hours off the mark.
> I dug in the archives and noticed that:
>
> "Qmail always uses UTC. It's hard coded in."
Correct.
> So UTC is Universal Coordinated Time. Should I set the servers bios
> clock to UTC? I use RedHat Linux and I am about to set it up again.
> Should I choose a timezone of UTC?
*NIX system clock runs on UTC. Linux will set the system clock from the
hardware clock, and you tell Linux whether the hardware clock keeps time in
local time, or in UTC, and Linux will automatically translate to/from UTC
if that's necessary. How the BIOS keeps time is irrelevant. The bottom
line is that the hardware clock must be translated to system clock's UTC at
boot time. Afterwards, you use the timezone setting to correctly display
the local time for each client, so if you have someone telnetting in from
Timbuktu, they will see all the dates and times in their local time.
Qmail uses UTC internally, but that is completely irrelevant, as robust
client software will always translate whatever timezone into the local
timezone. For example, my mail reader translated the datestamp on your
message to 2:21 PM US Eastern time, even though it was sent at 5:21 US
Eastern, because your clock is off by three hours. Someone who sent me
mail around the same time from halfway across the world also shows up here
with a timestamp of around 5:20 PM US Eastern Time. As long as your
timestamp is properly formatted, my software will automatically translate
it into my local time, irrespective of the fact if the actual timestamp
uses UTC or the sender's local time.
--
Sam
