Comment 4 for bug 279065

Colin thank you so much for the reference on the hardware clock! I do appreciate having the bigger picture.

As for this statement: "I find it very unlikely that a Unix-like system would default to keeping the hardware clock in UTC when no other operating systems are involved": I'm not sure I follow you. Are you saying that in a single OS install you *would* expect the hardware clock set to local time? If so, then I *believe* it's doing what you expect.

Regardless, I've been using Linux far longer than Solaris/OpenSolaris, so I'm not the best person to answer your questions. I'll ask around. In the meantime, here are the contents of my /etc/rtc_config file *on a machine where no other operating systems are involved*:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

#
# This file (/etc/rtc_config) contains information used to manage the
# x86 real time clock hardware. The hardware is kept in
# the machine's local time for compatibility with other x86
# operating systems. This file is read by the kernel at
# boot time. It is set and updated by the /usr/sbin/rtc
# command. The 'zone_info' field designates the local
# time zone. The 'zone_lag' field indicates the number
# of seconds between local time and Greenwich Mean Time.
#
zone_info=US/Eastern
zone_lag=14400

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hypothetically, were I to now install Ubuntu on this system, OpenSolaris presumably is not going to suddenly realize it has company and switch to UTC. In this scenario, Ubuntu would not detect the other installed operating system and setting UTC=no in /etc/default/rcS. The end result is OpenSolaris would think it's 4 hours later and will continue to think that each time it is used after having booted into Ubuntu. Hence my filing this bug.

I hope I'm making some modicum of sense. :-) And thanks again for your help -- and for responding so quickly!