On 2019 May 17 08:47:24, you wrote to Alan Ianson:

 >> BBBS seems to get the time right ok in Pacific Standard Time. It's when
 >> we spring ahead it doesn't change to Pacific Daylight Time. The
 >> computers clock does change but the TZUTC: kludge doesn't. I have found
 >> here that setting the TZ and TZUTC environments is needed, at least in
 >> PDT. In my case I set TZ=PDT+7 and TZUTC=-0700 and now my TZUTC kludg
 >> is correct.

 JS> Maybe as a temp workaround in the script file that starts BBBSD you
 JS> could do a date check. And when the Daylight Saving dates are reached
 JS> then the TZ and the TZUTC variables could be changed as necessary. For
 JS> me I would do it via a Bash script.

it should be easy enough to do ;)

eg: $ printf "TZUTC=$(date +"%z")\n"
TZUTC=-0400

the real trick will be to execute it at the proper time so that the env var
is set when the time changes... the quickest thing i can think of would be
for the BBS to exit back to the script and loop through the setting before
firing up the BBS again... that should be done at the proper times,
though...

the only problem with the above is that the FTSC spec for TZUTC does not
allow for the '+' to be specified for timezones east of UTC... the '+'
should be stripped off which makes the above quickie one-liner more
involved but not impossible to handle...

eg: $ printf "TZUTC=$(date +"%z" | sed 's/\+//')\n"

that'll strip out the '+' if it exists and will leave the '-' alone... so
if i've done this playing around correctly, something like

  export TZUTC=$(date +"%z" | sed 's/\+//')

should work but we have the problem of updating it when daylight saving
switches so there still needs to be some sort of updater executed or the
BBS would have to exit to the script which would loop, reset the env var
and restart the BBS...

i whipped up this little test script...

==== Begin "tzutctest"  ====
printf "before setting: '%s'\n" $TZUTC
TZUTC=$(date +"%z" | sed 's/\+//')
export TZUTC
printf "after setting : '%s'\n" $TZUTC
env | grep "TZUTC"
==== End "tzutctest" ====

when the script exits, TZUTC does not exist in the env so that means that a
script like this will need to be used for anything that wants the TZUTC env
var...

it would probably be best if the maintainer would check and see if the code
does this... the very best would be to check and set the variable when each
message is posted when the TZUTC control line is added to the message...
this for all messages posted... even for those uploaded via offline mail...
QWK/QWKE and BlueWave, which ever are supported...

one might want to see about putting the above in their ~/.bashrc so that it
is set for them when they login to the system... this just in case they use
external tools like a sysop reader to access the message base without
having to login to the BBS... one might place it in the global
/etc/bash.bashrc so that it is run for all accounts instead of just their
personal account... instead of using one of the .bashrc files, one might
use one of the .profile files or even create a tzutc.sh script and place it
in /etc/profile.d...

if one runs BBBS as a service, it would certainly need to be placed in that
script before starting BBBS but then we still have the thing about
resetting it when daylight switches over...

FWIW: this is almost exactly the same dance i had to play on my old OS/2
setup... in that case, i had to manually edit the config.sys since that's
where these are set and then reboot the system... that only so the native
OS/2 side would get updated... the DOS side was easy enough as i just did
the loop thing in the BBS .bat/.cmd files... i wrote a tool to determine
the timezone since OS/2 doesn't have that in its time records unless you
use one of peter moylan's (of weasel SMTP and ftpser server fame) tools...

oh yeah, the TZ can also be set like this... there's two TZ formats for
linux, though...

TZ='America/New_York'
or the POSIX format
TZ='EST5EDT'

which one you use depends on the software needs... some does POSIX and some
does not...

just rambling and trying to stave off depression again...

)\/(ark

Always Mount a Scratch Monkey
Do you manage your own servers? If you are not running an IDS/IPS yer doin'
it wrong...
... I'll have two brains on drugs, scrambled with bacon, grits, toast and coffee.
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