Re: weird time offset?

["Steven M. Bellovin" <smb%cs.columbia.edu@localhost>]

On Wed, 2 Jul 2008 19:20:57 -0400 (EDT)
der Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost> wrote:

> My xen domUs (i386, dom0 and domU both NetBSD 4.0) always show a time
> offset on boot:
> 
> Setting date via ntp.
>  2 Jul 19:20:17 ntpdate[186]: step time server 216.46.1.2 offset
> 17830.926129 sec
> 
> The time offset is always within a second or two of that same
> magnitude, just a few minutes less than five hours.  (Five hours is
> the offset from EST to UTC, and I'd suspect that of being relevant
> except that we're now on EDT, not EST, so our offset is only four
> hours.)
> 
> Any idea what's going on there?  Does it indicate a problem I should
> care about?  It doesn't seem to be causing any other obvious issues,
> but I distrust weirdness I don't understand.
> 
Is there some BIOS setting?  I sure suspect time zone, too; the
daylight saving time correction is later in the process, as I recall.

Here's a thought: before starting a domU, set TZ to something like
PST8PDT, or to GMT, and see what happens.


                --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb