On Fri, May 29, 2015 at 12:27:39PM -0400, Matthew Miller wrote:
On Wed, May 27, 2015 at 06:53:51PM +0200, Rui Tiago Cação Matos
wrote:
> > * Remove the timezone selection spoke from either anaconda or gnome
> > -initial-setup. These spokes are redundant and one or the other needs
> > to go. The reason to potentially retain it in Anaconda would be to get
> > the timestamps of installed files correct, if we care about that.
> Nit: file timestamps are not dependent on the timezone and packaged
> files timestamps are set to when the package was built.
This is only partly true — some files are created at package install
time, or by the installer itself.
This is generally only a problem when these turn out to have timestamps
in the future. That could be solved by automatically back-dating them
(several mechanisms possible) to at least the previous day (maybe a
time fixed per anaconda build?) but that would be confusing too.
Timestamps are stored in absolute time (UTC), so as long as that time
does not jump backwards (because of ntp or the user updating the clock)
timestamps are never in the future. When you change the timezones only
the way that timestamps are displayed is changed (*).
So whether timestamps are consistent is a question of (UTC) time being
correct or at least monotonic, and not the timezone.
Zbyszek
(*) Different users can use different timezones simulataneously. E.g. when
logging over ssh. The "system" timezone is just the default, so the
concept of "the" timezone with which timestamps are written is not well
defined.