Time is off

[Michael Hughes]

The time on the page is off about 15 minutes. Do you not use NTP?

 

[me4osu]

Look at some of the new posts. Time is listed as this afternoon of some of them.

 

[Steve St.Laurent]

No, the server wasn't setup to use NTP and I probably won't. The reason is that we change the clock to reflect daylight savings time so that the users don't have to change their clock settings. vBulletin doesn't handle daylight savings time so each fall and spring we adjust the clock by an hour. If we don't do that then we get a TON of emails asking why the server clock is an hour off. It's easier to just adjust it manually. I have updated the clock this morning.



me4osu - I was setting the clock and set it to GMT thinking that's what the server used but it actually uses local time. Those posts happened in 1 minute while I was setting it!! I believe I've fixed the times on all those posts.



-Steve

 

[Michael Hughes]

Steve,

Why not set the users times based on the time zones and not just GMT-<number hours>, this way the user times would change for DST. I would think that this would be easy to setup and you wouldn't have to worry about it anymore, let NTP keep the time in sync.

 

[Steve St.Laurent]

The users times are set by time zone off of GMT. The problem is that the software is a fixed offset from the system clock - no adjustment for daylight savings time. So I were to use NPT every spring and fall all the users that are on daylight savings time (which is the vast majority of them) would have to switch their setting in the control panel to a different time zone. By setting it manually I just change the clock on the server by an hour (which is "technically" wrong) and the majority of users clocks are correct. If vBulletin supported daylight savings time on and off as well as time zone then it wouldn't be a problem - but it is.