Re: strange date

[Bob Proulx]

Bruno wrote:
> Ok. Everything was working perfectly until I adjusted the time in the
> KDE environment icon (it was a few minutes wrong). I did not change
> any environment variable, or file permissions. Maybe the program
> changed the permissions, but then is another type of problem (maybe
> stranger :o).

Yes.  The permissions are incorrect.  I think you see the problem but
just to be clear /etc/localtime needs to be readable by all.

> I was also expecting an eol in the /etc/timezone, and now I added it
> manually. 
> 
> The commands you asked:
> > open("/etc/localtime", O_RDONLY)        = -1 EACCES (Permission denied)
> > Tue, 18 Sep 2007 23:22:43 +0000

There is the problem.  Permission denied for non-root users.  Of
course root can open the file.  The UTC timezone +0000 was a clue that
this was the problem.

> > address@hidden ~]$ ls -ld /etc/localtime
> > -rw-r----- 1 root root 1983 Aug 23 11:22 /etc/localtime

This should be fixed.

  chmod a+r /etc/localtime

Then non-root can read the file and get the timezone information.

> > address@hidden ~]$ ls -ldL /etc/localtime
> > -rw-r----- 1 root root 1983 Aug 23 11:22 /etc/localtime

On some systems /etc/localtime would have been a symlink to
/usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Sao_Paulo and so I wanted a case with -L
to follow through the symlink in case the /usr/share/zoneinfo files
were the files that were not readable.

I am glad that the problem is now solved.

Bob