Burning CDs for HPUX

[Santosh Nair_1]

Hi all,

I have an interesting problem (hopefully). I have to cut
CDs with software we've written for HPUX to send to our
customers. Obviously they will need to mount these CDs
on their HP machines.

I've been able to successfully cut the CDs using cdrecord
so that it mounts on HPUX. The big problem that I'm
having is that the timestamps on the files on the CD are
8 hours behind what they should be, i.e. if a file was
last modified on 6/26 at 10:15, on the CD, it shows up
as 6/26 at 2:15. Has anyone encountered this before?

Also, I've noticed that with a regular CD, i.e with PC
software, the files show up with one timestamp when I
mount it on HPUX and with another timestamp when I
mount on it on a PC (the PC timestamp is correct and the
HPUX timestamp is 1 hour behind).

-Santosh Nair (snair@graffiti.net)

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Hi,

The confusion is caused by differences in timezones or daylight savings time (summer time) settings on the diffrent machines.

All UNIX boxes in the known universe stamp time as simply the number of seconds since Jan 1, 1980 00:00:00 UTC (Windows, DOS does the same except from Jan 1, 1970 00:00:00 UTC).

Two unix boxes will datestamp a file the same even if the timezone settings are different. The TZ variable only changes how date/time is displayed.

You simply need to set the TZ variable to the proper value and export it and all should be as expected.

You can set TZ system wide by editing /etc/TIMEZONE; you can also set TZ in your profile to override the system global value.

The format is as foillows:
TZ=CST6CDT
1st 3 chars - non daylight savings abbrev.
next char(2) - hours West of UTC; -N indicates hours East of UTC
Last 3 chars - daylight savings time abbrev.

[Magdi KAMAL]

Hi,

It sounds like GMT-6 ( its USA East ) ?.
Please check the profile and the application setting which manipulate the CD-writer (from HPUX side ).

[Santosh Nair_1]

Actually, the timezone on the system is correct, i.e.
EST5EDT, and the time is also correct. Initially I thought
it might have something to do with UTC, but as I
understand it, UTC is based on Greenwich Mean Time,
which would be 7 hours ahead of our time, but the CDs
are 8 hours back (I would have expected 7 hours ahead).

Also, I'm mounting the CD on the same machine where
I cut the CD and I'm seeing this behavior. Obviously the
timezone variable ($TZ) has not changed on this
machine between the time I cut the CD and when I
mounted the CD.

I'm not saying that anyone is wrong, but it doesn't make
sense to me that the TZ variable would have anything
to do with this problem(?)