[Opensim-dev] Timezones, UTC, GMT & PST

[Teravus Ovares]

As I said in IRC,

I'm firmly of the mind that we should make it easy to ensure that all
time data is consistant.   I think the easiest way to do this is to
standardize on UTC.  Whatever time zone your server hardware/OS is in,
you can always get UTC from it.

I am not averse to having a 'super advanced OMG what the heck are you
doing' option to set a UTC offset above and beyond..   but I really
think it should be UTC by default across the board.

Best Regards

Teravus

On 1/18/09, Gerhard Dünnebeil <Gerhard.Duennebeil at chello.at> wrote:
> When dealing with time you have to distinguish between the time the
> machines work on and the time the users sees.
>
> Introducing time zones at the wrong level also introduces a lot of
> confusion as you (the developer) always have to know with which time
> zone you currently deal.
>
> MySQL isn't really an issue as you can set the time zone you want to
> work in with the session.
>
> So my thoughts:
> Use UTC internally; that includes storage of data, machine to machine
> communication, ....
> Use the users time zone when (and only when) communicating with the
> user, which is mainly when times are displayed.
>
> This is easier as one might think, as using UTC as the time base is
> available in all standard OS (windows, linux, ...) these days. There is
> no need to set a system clock to UTC as long as the system knows the
> offset to UTC.
>
> Gerhard
>
>
> Dahlia Trimble wrote:
> > With the err... um... inevitable future event when the LL grid opens
> > the doors to full interoperability, and given that their large
> > customer base is accustomed to using "SLT" (California time) and all
> > the scripts that may assume SLT, shouldn't we weigh that option over
> > UTC or GMT or CUT or whatever it's called these days?
> >
> > On a side note, regions running in virtual machines may have less
> > control over the system clocks than regions running in a regular
> > machine. I'd like to suggest that region times could be configured in
> > OpenSim.ini and/or set by a central server using ntp or a similar
> > protocol.
> >
> > On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 10:32 AM, Charles Krinke <cfk at pacbell.net
> > <mailto:cfk at pacbell.net>> wrote:
> >
> >     There are some issues coming up about timezones and grids. It
> >     seems that events, scripts, web interfaces and other things are
> >     affected by timezones. It gets a bit more complicated when one
> >     considers that our mysql logic uses local time with calls that
> >     involve NOW().
> >
> >     Some folks feel that all the time on all the sims on all the grids
> >     should be set to UTC, and that is a reasonable approach.
> >
> >     Others feel that a UGAIM should set the timezone for a grid and
> >     tell the sims connected to that UGAIM what timezone they are in
> >     and what time it is at the time of grid registration with a UGAIM,
> >     and that is also a reasonable approach.
> >
> >     There is more. But, rather then just declaring what I might feel
> >     to be the answer, I would like to seek a consensus that is best
> >     for OpenSim and any comments or suggestions are greatly
> >     appreciated to this "timely" subject.
> >
> >     Charles
> >
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