From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Jan 21 04:52:45 2007 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2E8F816A402 for ; Sun, 21 Jan 2007 04:52:45 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd-questions@voidcaptain.com) Received: from mx4.x15.net (mx4.x15.net [69.55.237.194]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1A4C813C455 for ; Sun, 21 Jan 2007 04:52:45 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd-questions@voidcaptain.com) Received: from j1.x15.net [63.196.213.76] by mx4.x15.net with ESMTP id 611291731X1H8URu000IowTO; Sun, 21 Jan 2007 04:36:58 +0000 Message-ID: <45B2EDCC.2090901@voidcaptain.com> Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2007 20:36:28 -0800 From: Pete Slagle MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Matthew Seaman References: <~B45b012c10000.45b035cd0000.0001.mml.1959332346@svmailmel.bytecraft.internal> <45B1E278.7000607@infracaninophile.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <45B1E278.7000607@infracaninophile.co.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Daylight savings time / 6.1 and 4.11 X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 21 Jan 2007 04:52:45 -0000 Matthew Seaman wrote: > [You could make /etc/localtime a link or a symlink to the appropriate > file under /usr/share/zoneinfo, but only if /etc and /usr/share/zoneinfo > happen to be on the same filesystem (ie. on the root filesystem), which > is not the case in the default install of FreeBSD] As you suggest, making /etc/localtime a symlink ensures that the current /usr/share/zoneinfo file is always the one that actually gets used. That's an easy and significant benefit. So, why not do this on all boxes, even those that have / and /usr under separate filesystems? Granted, localtime will be unreadable whenever /usr is not mounted, but is that really a problem? Typically it will only be an issue at boot-time and in single user mode. The current time and file system times will be displayed in UTC, but this is only a small temporary inconvenience for the operator. Cron might not do its work as expected, but it is unlikely to be running in circumstances where /usr is not mounted. Perhaps some log files might be affected, but if /usr isn't mounted, then /var probably isn't either. Have I missed some big potential problem that might outweigh the benefit of using the symlink even when /etc/localtime and /usr/share/zoneinfo are on separate filesystems?