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Date: Tue, 18 May 2010 23:20:51 +0100
From: Cliff Hones <cliff AT hones DOT org DOT uk>
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Subject: Re: timezone setting ?
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Nellis, Kenneth wrote:

> You can set the time zone by setting environment variable
> TZ to a file path relative to /usr/share/zoneinfo, e.g.,
> 
> export TZ=America/New_York
> 
> I'm less clear on how it determines the time zone
> when TZ is not set. My guess is that TZ=posixrules
> is the default. Corrections are encouraged.

Well, around 5 years ago I looked into this, as I found that the
default timzone names used on UK installations were wrong.  Here's
what I posted back then:

  http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2005-08/msg00126.html

Since then the zoneinfo implementation has been added, but it appears
that if you don't explicitly set TZ the default is still taken from
your Windows timezone setting, so I still get GMTST and GMTDT, which
are somewhat unconventional and confusing for UK users.  Needless to
say, a UK Linux installation correctly defaults to GMT and BST.

I suppose setup.exe could be trained to convert the windows timezone
into a sensible global TZ setting - or possibly it could just present
the timezone list for a manual choice, as most attended Linux installs
do.

-- Cliff

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