RE: Service message: Daylight saving time ends

On Fri, 24 Oct 2003, Graap, Ken wrote:

> Shouldn't any site that uses journaling be concerned about setting the clock
> back ??? If you didn't, the time stampts associated with journal entries
> would be wrong...
>
> Wouldn't it be safer to power down, wait and hour, do a manual IPL and set
> the date and time then?
>
> Is this an issue that might affect your ability to recover using journals
> ????

We don't use use journals a lot, but so far this hasn't been a problem for
us.  However may I throw out an idea?  I think that generally RPG programs
use the wrong clock.  This happens because of the 'date' and 'time'
opcodes (and their cousins 'move *date datefield' and 'move UYEAR
yearfield').  These opcodes access the wrong clock.  I suggest that almost
every place that a date or a time is needed the C function gettimeofday()
should be used.  The reason for this is that gettimeofday() accesses the
software clock, which has an appropriate offset, timezone, and can be set
(even automatically) to adjust for daylight savings.  The hardware clock
should not be reset until the system is restarted - ever.  This way
journalling will have an uninterrupted progressive clock against which to
make entries, but users and everything else that matters will use the real
time.

James Rich