Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2007 20:36:28 -0800 From: Pete Slagle <freebsd-questions@voidcaptain.com> To: Matthew Seaman <m.seaman@infracaninophile.co.uk> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Daylight savings time / 6.1 and 4.11 Message-ID: <45B2EDCC.2090901@voidcaptain.com> In-Reply-To: <45B1E278.7000607@infracaninophile.co.uk> References: <~B45b012c10000.45b035cd0000.0001.mml.1959332346@svmailmel.bytecraft.internal> <C2D4EA0D-CDD9-45D9-B119-31396ADBF618@cc.usu.edu> <45B1E278.7000607@infracaninophile.co.uk>
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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?
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