Samba/hwclock -- Samba Time Server Not Right

[Andrew Bartlett]

David Rankin wrote:
> 
> Andrew,
> 
>     Since I got your message I've dived back into my mess with Samba
> serving the wrong time. I'm pulling my hair out. Look at the following.
> It doesn't make sense to me at all : (

I've looked at the snif you sent me.  Your Samba is convinced it is in
GMT.  Looking a the code, this can occur if you system does't supply a
gmtime() call or your system really thinks its in GMT.  It tells the
client this - the client should actually be able to say 'well i'm not
gmt, so I'll add/subtract....' but in any case we can't expect too much
of MS :-)

I'm wondering if Samba is starting before the timezone is set...

Can you kill off samba, and manually start it with 'smbd -D&& nmbd -D'
(at a root prompt).


> Ok, so what have I learned?
> 
>     (1)    It appears to me that Samba serves time based upon the system
> clock;
>     (2)    Regardless of what the tz setting is, Samba is going to serve
> the 'actual' time stored in the system clock regardless of the tz info;

No, regardless of the time zone, samba thinks its in utc.  Does
'gmtime()' work/exist on your system?  (Write a small C proggy to
test).  That failing will set GMT without the slightest mention in the
logs.

>     (3)    As a result/consequence of (2) above, Samba ignores the tz
> setting when serving time; and
>     (4)    All of you who are telling me that you have your server
> hardware clock and system clock set to UTC and are relying on the tz
> setting to have Samba serve the correct time to your windows clients ---
> I WANT TO KNOW HOW IN THE HECK YOU ARE DOING IT!!!!
> 
> In the immortalized words of Tom Hanks: "That's about all I have to say
> about that."
> 
> I hope this is helpful, at least somewhat thorough with regard to the
> problem I am experiencing. And I really hope that someone smarter than I
> can point out to me, diplomatically of course, where I have my "CRI."

I would rather like to get to the bottom of this some day...

Andrew Bartlett

-- 
Andrew Bartlett                                 abartlet at pcug.org.au
Manager, Authentication Subsystems, Samba Team  abartlet at samba.org
Student Network Administrator, Hawker College   abartlet at hawkerc.net
http://samba.org     http://build.samba.org     http://hawkerc.net