How To Set Timezone?

[todd]

My Pandora hung (at least... the CPU was maxed out for so long I got tired of waiting to try to kill the app gracefully). The power switch wouldn't help. So finally I dropped the battery. Everything booted up fine, but the clock was very wrong. So I did what any sane computer user would do: I loaded up ntpdate on my debian extend and got my clock perfectly set. In UTC. Since I live quite a ways from Greenwich, I need to set my timezone. But it looks like the "standard" timezone stuff might've been removed from our stripped-down version of Angstrom. Anybody know what I should do to get my timezone set properly?

 

[Prometheus]

Just trying to remember this "blind", since my Pandora's off for repairs right now, but, if you're in Xfce, have you tried looking in the Settings menu?

(Also, for future reference, the power switch won't help you if the machine is already on, because its purpose then is to switch into low-power mode. What you want to do next time, instead of pulling out the battery, is to hold the Pandora button and push the power switch as though you're powering the unit on - this will do a hard-reset. )

 

[EvilDragon]

Yep, in Settings: Date and Time

 

[Coder_TimT]

Yep, in Settings: Date and Time

Actually that doesn't end up correctly setting anything. I noticed this while working on scrobbling for ommpc, but haven't got around to filing a bug report for it...

A symlink /etc/localtime is created but it points to files that are missing as the OP mentioned... So for me it looks like this...

localtime -> /usr/share/zoneinfo/Etc/GMT-6

ls -la /usr/share/zoneinfo/
total 24
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 304 May 21 08:15 .
drwxr-xr-x 79 root root 5400 Jul 16 10:02 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4082 May 9 14:04 iso3166.tab
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 18684 May 9 14:04 zone.tab

Then /etc/profile just ends up assuming the timezone is UTC. So the clock ends up correct, but if you run date on the command line it shows as UTC. And if you try to do something like scrobble to a remote server that actually checks the time and timezone...it's obviously off...

 

[todd]

"Date and Time" is unresponsive for me. I click it, nothing happens.

I tried to set it by hand (ln -s) but, as noted above, the "normal" place to link to a time zone (/usr/share/zoneinfo) is kinda' empty.

I'm guessing what I need to do is pull the needed file (the timezone definition) off my Ubuntu box. But I was just checking to see if there was a "more correct" way to do it: i.e., if there was already a way of handling timezones present on the Pandora.

 

[Bosbeetle]

I can confirm the time not being correct for any scrobble plug-in so it must be the pandora settings that don"t really chance the real time settings apperently.

hehe my pandora scrobbles in the future

 

[WizardStan]

Try this:

sudo opkg update
sudo opkg install tzdata

That should get you the right timezone files, but depending on where you live, you may also require one of

sudo opkg install tzdata-africa
sudo opkg install tzdata-americas
sudo opkg install tzdata-antarctica
sudo opkg install tzdata-arctic
sudo opkg install tzdata-asia
sudo opkg install tzdata-atlantic
sudo opkg install tzdata-australia
sudo opkg install tzdata-europe

Then you just symlink /etc/localtime to the appropriate timezone data in /usr/share/zoneinfo/

edit:Nevermind those extra packages: tzdata package is actually just a wrapper around all of them.

 

[Bosbeetle]

just to be sure should I do

ln -s /etc/timezone /usr/share/zoneinfo/europe/paris

or

ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/europe/paris /etc/timezone

or something else hehe just symlink does not comupute in my windows mind.

and where is amsterdam

 

[WizardStan]

ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/europe/paris /etc/timezone

 

[Bosbeetle]

I did this and the command date still give UTC and scrobbling has the same offset

I did get

ln: creating symbolic link `/etc/timezone': File exists


did it create the link or should I first delete timezone?

 

[sebt3]

just to be sure should I do

ln -s /etc/timezone /usr/share/zoneinfo/europe/paris

or

ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/europe/paris /etc/timezone

or something else hehe just symlink does not comupute in my windows mind.

and where is amsterdam

My memory trick is "-s stand for source" (this not true as -s stand for symbolic, but this help me to remember in which order I've to use this.

 

[Bosbeetle]

its etc/localtime (not etc/timezone) and you have to delete or rename it first before making the symlink

still doesnt work

ah a restart worked now my panda is at CEST

 

[WizardStan]

Excellent. So has that solved your timezone problems?
The next major question we need to ask now is why aren't eh tzdata packages included by default? International machine, you'd think it would be a pretty important feature.

 

[EvilDragon]

Excellent. So has that solved your timezone problems?
The next major question we need to ask now is why aren't eh tzdata packages included by default? International machine, you'd think it would be a pretty important feature.

Good question - as we even use the same symlinking as above in our setup scripts
Probably forgotten to include it.

Fixed in GIT, will be included in next image and in HF4.

 

[Prometheus]

^ That promptness is fixing this stuff is one of the things I love about this project.

 

[davidgro]

Fixed in GIT, will be included in next image and in HF4.

At the (awesome!) rate these hotfixes are being developed, by the time I get my Pandora we will probably be up to Hotfix 8. Is there a quick way to tell what OS version is installed when mine arrives so I know if I will need to update it right away?

 

[Bosbeetle]

Excellent. So has that solved your timezone problems?
The next major question we need to ask now is why aren't eh tzdata packages included by default? International machine, you'd think it would be a pretty important feature.

Good question - as we even use the same symlinking as above in our setup scripts
Probably forgotten to include it.

Fixed in GIT, will be included in next image and in HF4.

Nice

@davidgro: all HF's included the prior ones So you only have to download the last one

 

[todd]

Try this:

sudo opkg install tzdata

Then you just symlink /etc/localtime to the appropriate timezone data in /usr/share/zoneinfo/

Beautiful: that was exactly what I needed. The timezone packages swiped from the Debian partition didn't seem to work. But this worked right away. Thank you!

 

[Mjlink]

My time will not stay current.

What's up?

Peace & Pandora,

Link

 

[WizardStan]

My time will not stay current.

What's up?

Try this:
sudo /sbin/hwclock --hctosys
That'll pull the time from the hardware clock and help track down where the problem is.
If the time updates correctly, then the hardware clock is fine. Which it should, I've got no reason to suspect that's the problem.
I suspect that the 14mhz of low power mode is doing some funky things to the software clock.