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UTC Local time and vfat files

Posted: Mon Jul 20, 2009 4:09 am
by silverbird
I have mint at home and xp at the office. I use a usb drive to update data from home to office thereby keeping 3 copies of my most important data, one at home, one in the office and one set on the usb drive.

My problem started when I switched to linux mint at home and used rsync to keep the files on linux and usb drive synchronized. When I use nautilus in mint to view the files on the usb drive the times are always +8hrs compared to when I look at the times using xp. I figured this was something to do with utc time (gmt) as I live in the Philippines which is gmt + 8.

My solution is to go into /etc/default/rcS and edit the section utc=yes changing to utc=no.

This does not seem to affect the time displayed at bottom right of the screen but shows the time on the usb drive to be the same as it does with xp.

Have I done the right thing? I expected the time at bottom right to be wrong as I expected the clock in the bios to be displayed without any modification so I guess I didn't fully understand the other forum topics I read on this subject.

We don't have changes to local time for summer time etc. in the Philippines, so I don't need my clock kept accurately synchronized for that reason.

I was trying to have the bios time and the linux time to be the same, then when I dual boot into xp I would also have the correct time displayed in Windows. But I will settle for having linux see the time correctly on my usb drive then I don't accidentally update files in the wrong direction.

If I remember correctly, though I didn't pay much attention at the time, when I installed mint 6 I was asked about utc time, but I don't remember being asked with mint 7, nor could I find any means in the control center of making changes to utc or local time.

Re: UTC Local time and vfat files

Posted: Mon Jul 20, 2009 4:53 am
by emorrp1
You should be ok with that solution, you will have been asked to select your timezone on install, when the map of the world came up, but it's not a problem if you didn't see that. To get the clock to display correctly:
1) click on the applet
2) click the little down arrow next to "Locations"
3) click on the Edit button that appears
4) add your new location (Philippines is listed)
5) hover your mouse over the new location that's been added, and click the set button

Re: UTC Local time and vfat files

Posted: Mon Jul 20, 2009 8:40 pm
by silverbird
Thank you.

I got the screen to select the timezone - but not to choose utc or local time (which I though I had when I installed mint 6 - but I could be mistaken, I tried so many distros at that time.

Re: UTC Local time and vfat files

Posted: Tue Jul 21, 2009 3:05 am
by emorrp1
selecting the timezone is selecting local time isn't it? and you already said you changed to utc=no in /etc/default/rcS