Re: [gentoo-user] Re[2]: [gentoo-user] Re[2]: [gentoo-user] Server system date synchronizaion
On Sat, 27 Apr 2013 02:20:08 +0100, Peter Humphrey wrote: No it wouldn't - DST makes it darker in the morning. When I was about 11, the government experimented with using BST all year round. One of the reasons given for not doing it was that kids would have to go to school in the dark. ... and the children's accident rate in Scotland shot up. They have re-examined the data and found that that was not necessarily true. While the accident rate in the morning did go up, the afternoon rate went down by more, because drivers are more alert in the morning so cope with the darkness better. It wasn't only Scotland, in fact they aren't affected that much anyway. I worked in Dundee one December and it was dark until almost 10am, without DST. When they trialled winter DST, I was going to school in the dark in London. And what is this idea of saving daylight? Only an American could conceive of such a nonsense (I hope). It was the Germans, during WW1, quickly copied by Britain. The idea was to improve the productivity of the factories. And you are saving daylight, you are saving up an hour of daylight that you would otherwise sleep through and spending it at a more suitable time a few hours later. No one suggested a Daylight Bank :-O -- Neil Bothwick Mouse: (n.) an input device used by management to force computer users to keep at least a part of their desks clean. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Re[2]: [gentoo-user] Re[2]: [gentoo-user] Server system date synchronizaion
On 27/04/2013 03:20, Peter Humphrey wrote: On Friday 26 April 2013 22:43:10 Neil Bothwick wrote: On Fri, 26 Apr 2013 23:10:46 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote: I wasn't born here in Africa and didn't spend primary school years here either. But I distinctly recall having to walk to school in the snow and in the dark to geet their before 9 o'clock. Not fun. DST would have helped. No it wouldn't - DST makes it darker in the morning. When I was about 11, the government experimented with using BST all year round. One of the reasons given for not doing it was that kids would have to go to school in the dark. ... and the children's accident rate in Scotland shot up. And what is this idea of saving daylight? Only an American could conceive of such a nonsense (I hope). It's not saving daylight, taken literally it's a misnomer. Daylight Savings is just easier to say and get an acronym for than Having more of the hours in a day when you are up awake and trying to do work happen when it's light rather than dark -- Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] Re[2]: [gentoo-user] Server system date synchronizaion
On 27/04/2013 00:11, Paul Hartman wrote: On Fri, Apr 26, 2013 at 3:54 PM, Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com wrote: On 26/04/2013 22:46, the guard wrote: Пятница, 26 апреля 2013, 22:41 +02:00 от Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com: Do none of us here ever deal with Windows? :-) I notice that no-one has yet mentioned that Windows does not do ntp, as Windows does not do time right, doesn't do timezones right and I strongly suspect can't even do dates right (this latter still unproven) Windows time servers need some magic Microsoft thing called ENTP which is in no way related to the ntp we all know and love It refuses to adjust time if you have a wrong date. timezone is set in your system I was thinking more along the lines of how Windows has no concept of UTC set in the hw clock and a local timezone, and how timezones are odd things like Harare/Pretoria instead of the official names like SAST GMT+2 as set by the scientific timekeeping community. How about daylight savings? Can Windows deal with that? Other than by just shoving the clock back and forward by an hour on the right days? I've used windows for the past 25,000+ work hours at my job (I wish that were an exaggeration) in an all-Microsoft corporate environment. I dare not declare myself an expert in anything Windows so as not to encourage more of it. :) [snip much detail about Windows tying itself in knots to do something quite simple] Now we return to our regularly-scheduled programming... In comparison I have it easy :-) The last time there was a leap-second all I had to do was check our time servers tracked upstream wrt leap-*, and checked that my team's machines did the same. ClusterSSH, bash, grep, sed and awk made this an exercise in on-liner skills :-) I then told the reat of the company using Unix to do the same, and the whole thing was a non-event. Now for the Windows fellows and the idiot running the Domain Controllers in OurAmazingParentCompanyWhoThinkTheyAreCool(tm). Apparently they had a torrid time of it, especially as they ignored all heads-up communications from us. I don't know how they managed to fix all the Windows workstations as we were quite happy to return that favour. -- Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] Re[2]: [gentoo-user] Re[2]: [gentoo-user] Server system date synchronizaion
On 2013-04-26 5:10 PM, Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com wrote: I wasn't born here in Africa and didn't spend primary school years here either. But I distinctly recall having to walk to school in the snow and in the dark to geet their before 9 o'clock. Not fun. DST would have helped. But what would make more sense (at least in my mind) would be to have official 'working hours' changes, and adjust those, rather than change the clocks - ie, in your example, instead of school starting at 9:00am, it switches to start at 10:00am.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re[2]: [gentoo-user] Re[2]: [gentoo-user] Server system date synchronizaion
On 27/04/2013 18:24, Tanstaafl wrote: On 2013-04-26 5:10 PM, Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com wrote: I wasn't born here in Africa and didn't spend primary school years here either. But I distinctly recall having to walk to school in the snow and in the dark to geet their before 9 o'clock. Not fun. DST would have helped. But what would make more sense (at least in my mind) would be to have official 'working hours' changes, and adjust those, rather than change the clocks - ie, in your example, instead of school starting at 9:00am, it switches to start at 10:00am. That's probably a better way overall. It would suit the dairy cows! -- Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] Re[2]: [gentoo-user] Re[2]: [gentoo-user] Server system date synchronizaion
On Sat, 27 Apr 2013 12:24:53 -0400, Tanstaafl wrote: But what would make more sense (at least in my mind) would be to have official 'working hours' changes, and adjust those, rather than change the clocks - ie, in your example, instead of school starting at 9:00am, it switches to start at 10:00am. That would mean lots of separate changes, including things that are regulated by time, such as licencing hours (which, incidentally, were introduced here in the same Act of Parliament as DST, and for the same reason). A single, well documented, change to clocks is a lot simpler than every business and organisation having date-dependent trading hours. -- Neil Bothwick Anything worth fighting for is worth fighting dirty for. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Re[2]: [gentoo-user] Re[2]: [gentoo-user] Server system date synchronizaion
On 26/04/2013 23:43, Neil Bothwick wrote: On Fri, 26 Apr 2013 23:10:46 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote: I wasn't born here in Africa and didn't spend primary school years here either. But I distinctly recall having to walk to school in the snow and in the dark to geet their before 9 o'clock. Not fun. DST would have helped. No it wouldn't - DST makes it darker in the morning. When I was about 11, the government experimented with using BST all year round. One of the reasons given for not doing it was that kids would have to go to school in the dark. Hmmm. DST as punted here was couched in reverse terms - have kids go to school when it was light, as it would still be light in the early afternoon when they went home. DST never took off here, it would only be useful in the Cape down south and only for about a month or so of the year. -- Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
[gentoo-user] Re[2]: [gentoo-user] Server system date synchronizaion
Пятница, 26 апреля 2013, 22:41 +02:00 от Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com: On 26/04/2013 20:54, Paul Hartman wrote: On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 9:33 AM, Nick Khamis sym...@gmail.com wrote: Hello Everyone, We are trying to sync our server's time with an accurate ntp server, and was wondering which of the many solutions are considered viable. I did see the http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Time_Synchronization. Our services are quite time sensitive. I think the classic method is to use net-misc/ntp See the extensive article at http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/NTP for great examples and description. Do none of us here ever deal with Windows? :-) I notice that no-one has yet mentioned that Windows does not do ntp, as Windows does not do time right, doesn't do timezones right and I strongly suspect can't even do dates right (this latter still unproven) Windows time servers need some magic Microsoft thing called ENTP which is in no way related to the ntp we all know and love It refuses to adjust time if you have a wrong date. timezone is set in your system
Re: [gentoo-user] Re[2]: [gentoo-user] Server system date synchronizaion
On 26/04/2013 22:46, the guard wrote: Пятница, 26 апреля 2013, 22:41 +02:00 от Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com: On 26/04/2013 20:54, Paul Hartman wrote: On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 9:33 AM, Nick Khamis sym...@gmail.com wrote: Hello Everyone, We are trying to sync our server's time with an accurate ntp server, and was wondering which of the many solutions are considered viable. I did see the http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Time_Synchronization. Our services are quite time sensitive. I think the classic method is to use net-misc/ntp See the extensive article at http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/NTP for great examples and description. Do none of us here ever deal with Windows? :-) I notice that no-one has yet mentioned that Windows does not do ntp, as Windows does not do time right, doesn't do timezones right and I strongly suspect can't even do dates right (this latter still unproven) Windows time servers need some magic Microsoft thing called ENTP which is in no way related to the ntp we all know and love It refuses to adjust time if you have a wrong date. timezone is set in your system I was thinking more along the lines of how Windows has no concept of UTC set in the hw clock and a local timezone, and how timezones are odd things like Harare/Pretoria instead of the official names like SAST GMT+2 as set by the scientific timekeeping community. How about daylight savings? Can Windows deal with that? Other than by just shoving the clock back and forward by an hour on the right days? -- Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
[gentoo-user] Re[2]: [gentoo-user] Re[2]: [gentoo-user] Server system date synchronizaion
Пятница, 26 апреля 2013, 22:54 +02:00 от Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com: On 26/04/2013 22:46, the guard wrote: Пятница, 26 апреля 2013, 22:41 +02:00 от Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com: On 26/04/2013 20:54, Paul Hartman wrote: On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 9:33 AM, Nick Khamis sym...@gmail.com wrote: Hello Everyone, We are trying to sync our server's time with an accurate ntp server, and was wondering which of the many solutions are considered viable. I did see the http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Time_Synchronization. Our services are quite time sensitive. I think the classic method is to use net-misc/ntp See the extensive article at http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/NTP for great examples and description. Do none of us here ever deal with Windows? :-) I notice that no-one has yet mentioned that Windows does not do ntp, as Windows does not do time right, doesn't do timezones right and I strongly suspect can't even do dates right (this latter still unproven) Windows time servers need some magic Microsoft thing called ENTP which is in no way related to the ntp we all know and love It refuses to adjust time if you have a wrong date. timezone is set in your system I was thinking more along the lines of how Windows has no concept of UTC set in the hw clock and a local timezone, and how timezones are odd things like Harare/Pretoria instead of the official names like SAST GMT+2 as set by the scientific timekeeping community. How about daylight savings? Can Windows deal with that? Other than by just shoving the clock back and forward by an hour on the right days? All I can say that XP didn't understand our polititians when they cancelled summer time daylight saving. btw I saw a good quote in this list. something like only a white man can believe that by tearing a blanket at the bottom and attaching it on the top he will make tha blanket longer
Re: [gentoo-user] Re[2]: [gentoo-user] Re[2]: [gentoo-user] Server system date synchronizaion
On 26/04/2013 23:02, the guard wrote: I was thinking more along the lines of how Windows has no concept of UTC set in the hw clock and a local timezone, and how timezones are odd things like Harare/Pretoria instead of the official names like SAST GMT+2 as set by the scientific timekeeping community. How about daylight savings? Can Windows deal with that? Other than by just shoving the clock back and forward by an hour on the right days? All I can say that XP didn't understand our polititians when they cancelled summer time daylight saving. btw I saw a good quote in this list. something like only a white man can believe that by tearing a blanket at the bottom and attaching it on the top he will make tha blanket longer XP didn't understand our politicians either, but we are a special case amongst special cases. Nothing in this entire universe understands *our* politicians, so XP gets a free pass on that one here :-) And that's a funny joke, but not really accurate. Daylight savings is designed to have the big orange ball visible in the sky for the maximum amount of time whilst people are working at their daily 9 to 5. The day doesn't get any longer, you just shift the darkness part forwards and backwards. I wasn't born here in Africa and didn't spend primary school years here either. But I distinctly recall having to walk to school in the snow and in the dark to geet their before 9 o'clock. Not fun. DST would have helped. -- Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] Re[2]: [gentoo-user] Re[2]: [gentoo-user] Server system date synchronizaion
On Fri, 26 Apr 2013 23:10:46 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote: I wasn't born here in Africa and didn't spend primary school years here either. But I distinctly recall having to walk to school in the snow and in the dark to geet their before 9 o'clock. Not fun. DST would have helped. No it wouldn't - DST makes it darker in the morning. When I was about 11, the government experimented with using BST all year round. One of the reasons given for not doing it was that kids would have to go to school in the dark. -- Neil Bothwick Top Oxymorons Number 22: Childproof signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Re[2]: [gentoo-user] Server system date synchronizaion
On Fri, Apr 26, 2013 at 3:54 PM, Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com wrote: On 26/04/2013 22:46, the guard wrote: Пятница, 26 апреля 2013, 22:41 +02:00 от Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com: Do none of us here ever deal with Windows? :-) I notice that no-one has yet mentioned that Windows does not do ntp, as Windows does not do time right, doesn't do timezones right and I strongly suspect can't even do dates right (this latter still unproven) Windows time servers need some magic Microsoft thing called ENTP which is in no way related to the ntp we all know and love It refuses to adjust time if you have a wrong date. timezone is set in your system I was thinking more along the lines of how Windows has no concept of UTC set in the hw clock and a local timezone, and how timezones are odd things like Harare/Pretoria instead of the official names like SAST GMT+2 as set by the scientific timekeeping community. How about daylight savings? Can Windows deal with that? Other than by just shoving the clock back and forward by an hour on the right days? I've used windows for the past 25,000+ work hours at my job (I wish that were an exaggeration) in an all-Microsoft corporate environment. I dare not declare myself an expert in anything Windows so as not to encourage more of it. :) AFAIK the windows time service (w32time) does everything internally and between machines using UTC, but translates to/from local time for updating the hardware clock and the OS time. When daylight saving time happens it just changes the clock, though I have heard of some sites where the time change does not occur until the next time sync happens. If DST happens when the machine is powered off, it changes it at the next reboot (and usually pops up a little window to let you know what has happened). Sometimes if you reboot multiple times on a DST changeover day it can adjust the clock repeatedly... If you haven't installed Windows Updates or are using an unsupported version, your DST and time zone info may be outdated. For example, in the US about 10 years ago they changed the start and end of DST by a few weeks. Any devices using the old logic will be wrong for about a month out of the year. If someone manually fixes the time on their workstation, it will be correct until it changes itself and then it'll be wrong again. :) Also, being Windows, people tend to set the wrong time zone, don't check the use daylight saving box, choose Central America (continent) instead of Central US (country) time zone, etc. Then they send out meeting invitations in Outlook and the time gets shifted by the Exchange server and everybody shows up to a conference room an hour early, except for the person who organized the meeting, naturally. Time sync has been built into Windows since Win 2000, and machines who are part of a domain sync time with their domain controller using some proprietary protocol called NT5DS. If you have admin rights you can edit the registry and change it to use plain old NTP and sync with a regular NTP server. The DC can sync with other DCs or standard NTP server(s) over the internet. Home machines w/o a domain can set an NTP server in the date and time settings without messing with the registry, I think. (I don't use Windows at home.) The time sync service by default changes the time gradually, taking up to an hour to make the adjustment when there is a difference. Not sure if there is an upper limit where it refuses to adjust if it's too wrong. You can also force an immediate sync in those cases. There is a multi-purpose time utility built-in to windows called w32tm.exe that lets you do various time operations, giving some insight into the way Windows sees the world. I can do things like: C:\Windows\system32w32tm /tz Time zone: Current:TIME_ZONE_ID_DAYLIGHT Bias: 360min (UTC=LocalTime+Bias) [Standard Name:Central Standard Time Bias:0min Date:(M:11 D:1 DoW:0)] [Daylight Name:Central Daylight Time Bias:-60min Date:(M:3 D:2 DoW:0)] The interesting part there is UTC=LocalTime+Bias. So that seems to be how they handle that. The other lines show what it knows about when DST kicks in and the additional bias. C:\Windows\system32w32tm /query /status Leap Indicator: 0(no warning) Stratum: 4 (secondary reference - syncd by (S)NTP) Precision: -6 (15.625ms per tick) Root Delay: 0.2329102s Root Dispersion: 0.3298777s ReferenceId: 0x0A010046 (source IP: 10.1.0.70) Last Successful Sync Time: 4/26/2013 10:37:44 AM Source: DC1.example.com Poll Interval: 15 (32768s) Tells me about the time sync status on my workstation and info about the last sync. C:\Windows\system32w32tm /stripchart /computer:time-a.nist.gov /samples:10 Tracking time-a.nist.gov [129.6.15.28:123]. Collecting 10 samples. The current time is 4/26/2013 4:08:03 PM. 16:08:03 d:+00.0467925s o:-00.2902514s [ *| ] 16:08:05 d:+00.0623842s o:-00.2958840s [ *|
Re: [gentoo-user] Re[2]: [gentoo-user] Re[2]: [gentoo-user] Server system date synchronizaion
On Friday 26 April 2013 22:43:10 Neil Bothwick wrote: On Fri, 26 Apr 2013 23:10:46 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote: I wasn't born here in Africa and didn't spend primary school years here either. But I distinctly recall having to walk to school in the snow and in the dark to geet their before 9 o'clock. Not fun. DST would have helped. No it wouldn't - DST makes it darker in the morning. When I was about 11, the government experimented with using BST all year round. One of the reasons given for not doing it was that kids would have to go to school in the dark. ... and the children's accident rate in Scotland shot up. And what is this idea of saving daylight? Only an American could conceive of such a nonsense (I hope). -- Peter
Re: [gentoo-user] Re[2]: [gentoo-user] Re[2]: [gentoo-user] Server system date synchronizaion
On 27/04/13 09:20, Peter Humphrey wrote: On Friday 26 April 2013 22:43:10 Neil Bothwick wrote: On Fri, 26 Apr 2013 23:10:46 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote: I wasn't born here in Africa and didn't spend primary school years here either. But I distinctly recall having to walk to school in the snow and in the dark to geet their before 9 o'clock. Not fun. DST would have helped. No it wouldn't - DST makes it darker in the morning. When I was about 11, the government experimented with using BST all year round. One of the reasons given for not doing it was that kids would have to go to school in the dark. ... and the children's accident rate in Scotland shot up. And what is this idea of saving daylight? Only an American could conceive of such a nonsense (I hope). I wish it were so ... every now and again they decide to try it - usually because one lot of pollies want to get the drop on the other and/or distract the sheeple with an issue zdump -v Australia/Perth The pollies (bless their little black hearts) decided to implement a trial with only a few weeks notice! - Linux/Unix had the updates within a day of the specs, distros followed with formal a couple of weeks later. MS took 12 months and exchange calendars where I work corrupted and had the be manually reentered (and then defaulted to the Ulan Bator timezone in Mongolia as they couldnt get windows to do it locally - yes they have a MS support contract and its a mainly MS shop). Same going back ... dont know what it cost in lost productivity, mistakes and other problems but it wasn't small. After the three year trial the pollies went to a referendum and said ok, you have had 3 years and don't you like it now your used to it? ... and it was thrown out yet again :) Even once the fixes were in windows, each change point was problematic for some/many in IT. BillK
