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

[Melanie]

And, as I said, I care about being _able_ to put time data on disk 
in local time (NOT UTC + offset) with all local time quirks.
That doesn't have to be default, or trivial, but must remain possible.

Melanie


Teravus Ovares wrote:
> 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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>> >
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