Time Synchronisation

[Chris Watt]

At 11:47 AM 5/30/00 +0000, Mike.Molnar at sita.int wrote:

>When I write a file to one of the samba shares, the file save time is 1 hour
>old.   If I set "time offset = 60" in smb.conf, then when I do my "net
time" the
>PC time will be 1 hour ahead but the file save time will now be correct ??

-- SNIP --

>Basically I would like my PC and RS6000 to be in time sync'd and also have
the
>files written to the samba shares on the RS6000 to have the same time.


This is debatable, "time offset" is usually used when the machines are
actually seperated by a timezone. In your case it sounds like some sort of
problem with the conversion of local time to UTC that Samba is attempting
to perform, but whether this is a problem with your OS or just with the
combination of that OS and Samba I cannot say (it's probably not Samba in
general because mine works fine). If you use "time offset" to correct file
age and keep using "net time" to sync clocks it will probably backfire, all
the PC's would have clocks one hour ahead and file creation times would be
correct (but still appear wrong because the clocks are wrong). My solution
to this would be to install xntpd (or some similar program) on some *IX
machine on the network and use that as the authoratative time-server for
everything (*IX machines can just run ntpdate as a cron job, Windows and
Mac can run a freeware NTP client on login). 

>I think it's something on the UNIX box and my first guess is that Samba is
not
>handling it correctly.  But can I fix this or work around it?

Well, fixing it is an interesting problem, not sure exactly what flavor of
UNIX you're running but the first thing to do would be to find out exactly
what Samba is calling on to do local time conversion (read the source &
possibly talk to the author) and then experiment with (and possibly fix or
complain to the author about) that function. Presumably it's either being
called incorrectly or is itself broken.

Lastly, if you installed a pre-compiled version of Samba, it wouldn't hurt
to try building it on your system to see if the config script is clever
enough to detect and work around this.

I'm sorry my advice is so general, but while I have done a fair bit of what
I would characterize as installation, use and playing with time related
software (in the persuit of ever more closely sync'd server clocks to deal
with a few touchy programs) I've never actually encountered a problem like
the one you're having. Possibly someone else on this list?
--

Who is this General Failure, and why is he reading my hard disk?