[mythtv-users] UTC vs BST on a combined frontend/backend

[Stephen Worthington]

On Fri, 9 May 2014 07:48:26 +0100, you wrote:

>On 8 May 2014 23:05, Mike Perkins <mikep at randomtraveller.org.uk> wrote:
>
>> On 08/05/14 22:52, Greg Cope wrote:
>>
>>> Hi All,
>>>
>>> I like my hosts to run UTC and not change time.
>>>
>>> However myth seems to like to run in localtime.
>>>
>>> Is it possible to get myth backend/frontend/myweb to run in localtime (in
>>> my case GMT/BST as appropriate) whilst the host runs UTC?
>>>
>>> For example Mythweb seems to have the programs in the right time slot - ie
>>> "News at 10" is in the right time, but the time displayed by Mythweb is 1
>>> hr out presently.  Ie News at 10 appears at 2100, but myth will record it
>>> at 2200 BST/2100  UTC.
>>>
>>>  Sounds like you have a configuration problem. Check your timezone files
>> and make sure all your hosts are actually running a correctly configured
>> ntp/ntpdate.
>>
>> --
>>
>> Mike Perkins

>How do I set Myth to be Europe/London?
>
>Host is configured to UTC;
>
>myth at s:~/stuff/myth$ ntpq -p
>     remote           refid      st t when poll reach   delay   offset
> jitter
>==============================================================================
>-ip146255057034. 195.58.160.5     3 u  873 1024  377   62.904   -2.420
>1.730
>+electra.pinklem 129.69.1.153     2 u  327 1024  377   26.323    0.229
>2.554
>+gamma.rueckgr.a 131.188.3.222    2 u  307 1024  377   42.463    0.739
>1.224
>-ramses.wh2.tu-d 5.9.110.236      3 u  267 1024  377   56.956   -2.448
>1.353
>*golem.canonical 131.188.3.220    2 u  811 1024  377   24.814    0.055
>0.406
>
>myth at s:~/stuff/myth$ cat /etc/localtime
>TZif2UTCTZif2UTC
>UTC0
>
>myth at s:~/stuff/myth$ cat /etc/timezone
>Etc/UTC

You need to set the PC's timezone to your local timezone.  In Linux,
that does not change the actual clocks everything is run from - they
are always UTC (unless you set the special Windows PC compatibility
option).  What happens is all the Linux software translates from UTC
to the local timezone when displaying a time, but time calculations
are normally done in UTC.

I am guessing that your problem stems from the UK having daylight
saving time at the moment.  Your PC is still maintaining UTC as its
displayed time as well as the real time in its clocks.  Setting your
timezone to Europe/London will make the displayed time automatically
track the correct daylight saving changes, and still leave the actual
clocks running UTC.

In Ubuntu, you can change the timezone settings from a command line
like this:

  sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

and there is probably a GUI way of doing it also.