Date Command: Telnet & SSH Differ

[Karl Balsmeier]

One of the oddest things i've seen in awhile, why does a USER LOGIN under SSH show a different output than under TELNET?

under telnet connect:
$ Tue Mar 25 16:02:34 EST 2003
which is wrong!

under ssh connect:
Tue Mar 25 13:06:59 PST 2003
which is correct

How do I fix/ adjust telnet to give the correct time?

And I thought that date/time were controlled by set_parms timezone, etc/profile, /etc/TIMEZONE and .profile, .login, .cshrc settings...

-karlski

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi karlski,

As soon as you connect - either way - do

echo $TZ

This is the env parm that controls how time/date will be *displayed*.

Rgds,
Jeff

[Wilfred Chau_1]

check /etc/profile and see what TZ is set to?

[Karl Balsmeier]

I have actually checked and corrected all the normal files. What is interesting is that I just logged in as root under telnet and ran the date command, it appears to have fixed the problem.

This appears to be related in some odd way to telnet itself not picking up the timezone adjustments as they are normally done with the typical files/commands. Does anyone know if telnetd caches the time if say, a machine is set to EST and then switches to PST?

-karl

[Patrick Wallek]

The telnet daemon itself has absolutely nothing to do with displaying the date. As said, the date display is controlled by the TZ environment variable. Once the variable is set for a session, it does not change unless you explicitly change it.

The /etc/TIMEZONE, if the file exists, is your default timezone (have a look at /etc/profile). BUT the user can change this in his / her environment by setting TZ in their own .profile, .cshrc, or whatever is appropriate for their shell.

[Steven E. Protter · Accepted solution]

hmmm.

/etc/profile sources for certain when a user telnets in.

ssh. Looks like it sources the file too.

my echo $TZ shows the same value whether I connect via ssh or telnet.

I did this:

env > telnet.env with the telnet session.
env > ssh.env with the ssh login

diff ssh.env telnet.env

[5003#] diff ssh.env telnet.env
4d3
< SSH_TTY=/dev/pts/0
11d9
< USER=root
16d13
< SSH_CLIENT=10.1.11.60 49692 22


So, there should not be differences.

I know this probably isn't helpful but it must be something else.

SEP

[Sorrel G. Jakins]

Someone told me that ssh does NOT run /etc/profile. If that is true, could it be the source of your problem?