* Server Time Incorrect * Time Zone Offsets Incorrect *

[Wayne Luke]

UMMM.... Pacific Time is 8 hours behind or -8 UTC/GMT....

Timezones increase to the east and decrease to the west until they meet at the International Dateline.

[SkuZZy]

Originally posted by Wayne Luke
UMMM.... Pacific Time is 8 hours behind or -8 UTC/GMT....

Timezones increase to the east and decrease to the west until they meet at the International Dateline.

Well, that's what I meant. Either way, it doesn't work correctly. I needed to set it to GMT for it to work correctly for my users. When it's at GMT, my users can set their time to Pacific or whatever and it will work fine, but if I try setting the time to Pacific in the control panel, it will only work for default. If users try and change it mucks up.

[Wayne Luke]

Then your server is not set to Pacific Time. It must be set to GMT if that is the setting that provides the correct time.

[giz]

Seems that the original time issue has been corrected at the moment that the US stopped using Daylight Savings Time, overnight.


Recap: 90% of US based VB fora have reported GMT time as incorrect by one hour, for the last 6 months. The servers were run with offset of say UTC-0400, whilst the software had been told that the offset was UTC-0500. Now that the server has reverted to UTC-0500 (the standard time), all is in order.

Next spring, please, either don't apply DST to the server, or else do apply the DST, but also change the offset in the VB software at the same time, to reflect what you have done.

[charlesa]

However, servers in New Zealand have a problem. The timezone there is currently GMT+13 and will be for the rest of the (southern hemisphere) Summer. Administrators there have no way, within vB's interface, to tell the forum that it should be using an offset of GMT+13 (it only ranges from GMT-12 to GMT+12), so they've been forced to use GMT+12 instead. U.S. users who have been incorrectly using the "Standard" version of their local timezone did not see any any problem while "Daylight" time was in effect, but now they will return to being an hour off unless they switch to the standard timezone one hour west (more negative) than their current location.

For those administrators, the ability to set GMT+13 would be quite beneficial as it would get around these issues quite nicely.

I can understand the reticence - given that vB 3 reportedly allows for summer time offsets - to either find automatic ways of determining the server's timezone offset or for recognizing the summer offsets in the interface. Within regions that all observe the same rules for when summer time begins and when it ends, the naïve offset works acceptably well. For forums with international scope, however, these timezone issues are a nuisance.

[giz]

This coming weekend some countries in the Northern hemisphere are going to add one hour to their local time zone at the start of Daylight Savings Time. Other countries are not changing their time zone, or may be doing it in a few weeks time, or may have done it a few weeks ago.

In the Southern hemisphere, some countries may be ending their Daylight Savings Time, and returning to Standard Time by removing an hour from their local time zone. Others may be doing this in a few weeks time, or may have done it a few weeks ago.


If the place where this server is located is going to be changing the local time zone by an hour, can I suggest that one of two things happens. Either:

1. Do NOT alter the server time, leave it on the Standard Time zone all year round. Users who have a change of local time zone this weekend, can make the change in their user profile for their zone at the time it changes. Users who do not have a time zone change this weekend will therefore see no change and have to take no action.

2. If the server has to change it's local time by an hour, then please also tell the vbulletin software that the server time zone has changed, so that the vbulletin "GMT/UTC" time is still in step with the real UTC date and time. This will then allow all users who have a change of local time zone to make the change in their user profile as and when they need it. Users who do not have a time zone change this weekend will therefore see no change and have to take no action.



This post is trying to avoid the problems encountered in previous years, where the server time was changed by one hour, and this then made the time wrong for all users except those who were also changing their time by the same amount and in the same direction (which is a minority of countries). Everyone else in the world saw a sudden incorrect shift of forum time by 1 hour, and some people (those in the Southern hemisphere ending their DST on the same date) saw an incorrect shift of 2 hours, in addition to seeing a time in the forum that was quoted as being "GMT/UTC", but which was also wrong by one hour for the next 6 months.

[filburt1]

FWIW I run a daily cron job that synchs my server's time to a time server. As far as I know all reasonably well-managed servers are set up the same way.

This server apparently isn't...vB.org's clock for one is constantly fast; five mins at last check.

[Steve Machol]

Hmmm...I probably shouldn't have said 'reasonably well-managed' then huh?

[giz]

The server time re GMT(sic) is still correct even after the DST change! Seems that the problem I highlighted is sorted out here, but there are still a lot of bulletin boards out there that did make the change incorrectly.

Please drop the term GMT and replace it with UTC, as per the change from 1971.

[lunddogg]

More Info

FWIW I run a daily cron job that synchs my server's time to a time server. As far as I know all reasonably well-managed servers are set up the same way.

Could you provide the details of your cronjob or where I can find more information in order to set this up on my server?

Thanks.

[we_are_borg]

Could you provide the details of your cronjob or where I can find more information in order to set this up on my server?

Thanks.

Just Google for "Setting Cronjob for NTP" that should give results.