[arch-general] New kernel/updates - Is the timezone information messed up for dual-boot configs?

[David C. Rankin]

Listmates,

	I have been chasing my tail on the madwifi issue and I think I have found the 
problem. It's not madwifi at all, it's the timezone handling.

	My box is dual-boot, Arch - Vista. Accordingly, the hardware clock is set to 
localtime:

LOCALE="en_US.utf8"
HARDWARECLOCK="local"
USEDIRECTISA="no"
TIMEZONE="America/Chicago"
KEYMAP="us"

	However, I have been dumped into the recovery console each time I have booted 
for the past day or so. I wasn't alarmed at first because I have several hard 
drives for the box and I switch back and forth. One drive just contains linux 
so the hwclock is set to UTC for that setup and then set two localtime for the 
two other dual-boot drives. So when I reinstall a drive, it isn't uncommon to 
need to reset the clock and run fsck to get the hwclock and system happy for 
the new config.

	While trouble-shooting the madwifi issue, I booted again this morning and was 
again dumped into the recovery console to run fsck again. Looking at the 
clock, something had set the clock backwards 5 hours. (American/Chicago -6, +1 
for daylight savings = -5 tz offset). This should not have happened.

	I know this is related to something in a recent update. The pacman log is 
here:

http://www.3111skyline.com/download/Archlinux/config/wireless/pacman.log.bz2

	I noticed this morning that another tzdata update:

tzdata-2009m-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.gz

	But this did fix the problem. It seems no matter what I do, each time I boot, 
the time gets adjusted backwards by the zoneinfo offset. I have set/confirmed 
the hardware and sys clocks:

[13:05 alchemy:/home/david] # date
Tue Sep 22 13:09:56 CDT 2009
[13:09 alchemy:/home/david] # date -u
Tue Sep 22 18:09:59 UTC 2009
[13:09 alchemy:/home/david] # hwclock -r
Tue 22 Sep 2009 01:10:06 PM CDT  -1.000347 seconds

	and I have set hwclock --localtime and confirmed the same time setting with 
--systohc, but still, each time I boot, the time is 5 hours in the past.

	I have confirmed /etc/localtime is in fact the same as 
/usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Chicago:

[13:10 alchemy:/home/david] # diff /etc/localtime 
/usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Chicago

	So, I'm stumped. I certainly haven't changed any of the Arch settings for 
timezone handling since I installed arch in what -- March/April? So why all of 
a sudden is Arch subtracting 5 hours from my hwclock on either shutdown or 
boot? I know the checks are done in /etc/rc.sysinit and /etc/rc.shutdown, but 
what could have changed to make Arch want to treat the box as if the time were 
set to UTC?

	What else to check? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

(this time I have made an effor to post everything possibly relevant, so if I 
have missed something you would like to see, just ask, no need to yell)


-- 
David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.
Rankin Law Firm, PLLC
510 Ochiltree Street
Nacogdoches, Texas 75961
Telephone: (936) 715-9333
Facsimile: (936) 715-9339
www.rankinlawfirm.com