Subj : TZ or TZUTC environment variable
To : Jeff Smith
From : mark lewis
Date : Fri May 17 2019 07:02 pm
On 2019 May 17 08:47:24, you wrote to Alan Ianson:
>> BBBS seems to get the time right ok in Pacific Standard Time. It's when
>> we spring ahead it doesn't change to Pacific Daylight Time. The
>> computers clock does change but the TZUTC: kludge doesn't. I have found
>> here that setting the TZ and TZUTC environments is needed, at least in
>> PDT. In my case I set TZ=PDT+7 and TZUTC=-0700 and now my TZUTC kludg
>> is correct.
JS> Maybe as a temp workaround in the script file that starts BBBSD you
JS> could do a date check. And when the Daylight Saving dates are reached
JS> then the TZ and the TZUTC variables could be changed as necessary. For
JS> me I would do it via a Bash script.
it should be easy enough to do ;)
eg: $ printf "TZUTC=$(date +"%z")\n"
TZUTC=-0400
the real trick will be to execute it at the proper time so that the env var is
set when the time changes... the quickest thing i can think of would be for the
BBS to exit back to the script and loop through the setting before firing up
the BBS again... that should be done at the proper times, though...
the only problem with the above is that the FTSC spec for TZUTC does not allow
for the '+' to be specified for timezones east of UTC... the '+' should be
stripped off which makes the above quickie one-liner more involved but not
impossible to handle...
eg: $ printf "TZUTC=$(date +"%z" | sed 's/\+//')\n"
that'll strip out the '+' if it exists and will leave the '-' alone... so if
i've done this playing around correctly, something like
export TZUTC=$(date +"%z" | sed 's/\+//')
should work but we have the problem of updating it when daylight saving
switches so there still needs to be some sort of updater executed or the BBS
would have to exit to the script which would loop, reset the env var and
restart the BBS...
i whipped up this little test script...
==== Begin "tzutctest" ====
printf "before setting: '%s'\n" $TZUTC
TZUTC=$(date +"%z" | sed 's/\+//')
export TZUTC
printf "after setting : '%s'\n" $TZUTC
env | grep "TZUTC"
==== End "tzutctest" ====
when the script exits, TZUTC does not exist in the env so that means that a
script like this will need to be used for anything that wants the TZUTC env
var...
it would probably be best if the maintainer would check and see if the code
does this... the very best would be to check and set the variable when each
message is posted when the TZUTC control line is added to the message... this
for all messages posted... even for those uploaded via offline mail... QWK/QWKE
and BlueWave, which ever are supported...
one might want to see about putting the above in their ~/.bashrc so that it is
set for them when they login to the system... this just in case they use
external tools like a sysop reader to access the message base without having to
login to the BBS... one might place it in the global /etc/bash.bashrc so that
it is run for all accounts instead of just their personal account... instead of
using one of the .bashrc files, one might use one of the .profile files or even
create a tzutc.sh script and place it in /etc/profile.d...
if one runs BBBS as a service, it would certainly need to be placed in that
script before starting BBBS but then we still have the thing about resetting it
when daylight switches over...
FWIW: this is almost exactly the same dance i had to play on my old OS/2
setup... in that case, i had to manually edit the config.sys since that's where
these are set and then reboot the system... that only so the native OS/2 side
would get updated... the DOS side was easy enough as i just did the loop thing
in the BBS .bat/.cmd files... i wrote a tool to determine the timezone since
OS/2 doesn't have that in its time records unless you use one of peter moylan's
(of weasel SMTP and ftpser server fame) tools...
oh yeah, the TZ can also be set like this... there's two TZ formats for linux,
though...
TZ='America/New_York'
or the POSIX format
TZ='EST5EDT'
which one you use depends on the software needs... some does POSIX and some
does not...
just rambling and trying to stave off depression again...
)\/(ark
Always Mount a Scratch Monkey
Do you manage your own servers? If you are not running an IDS/IPS yer doin' it
wrong...
... I'll have two brains on drugs, scrambled with bacon, grits, toast and
coffee.
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* Origin: (1:3634/12.73)
