[LON-CAPA-admin] Daylight Savings Time?

[Guy Albertelli II]

Hi Todd,

> So I've been setting some due dates for next week, and notice that
> LON-CAPA is turning those times from MDT to MST for me automagically.
> Now this is quite nice, but with the new legislation, I don't think we
> actually switch to standard time until November 4th here in the US.

More details about exactly what you set and what you saw could make it
easier for me to analyze this.. but barring that a diatribe on DST and
how we try to handle things follows. :-)

> 
> So does this mean that I missed an update on my system (SUSE 9.3), or
> perhaps that LON-CAPA needs some tweakage? 

LON-CAPA stores every time as a UTC time (timezone free) and converts
it to local timezone info on the fly.

Thus LON-CAPA gets DST as correct as the info on the system allows it to.

For instance:

In the pop-up window It will show you the time and timezone info that
your local computer thinks it is.

(For me in the pop-up window if I pick
Nov 11 2007 00:00:00 
This is shown as a PST time, since in Nov, we will be off DST)

When I hit save This is now shown as a
Sat Nov 11 03:00:00 am 2007 (EST)
due date (since the server is currently in Eastern Time)

If you see a Oct. date/time that is is showing as MST I'd suspect you
are missing a SuSE update to correct the timezone info.

> In principle I suppose it doesn't matter, because 6pm MDT is the
> same as 5pm MST, as long as LON-CAPA picks up the proper time
> zone. . .

We always try to show the TimeZone so if something is awry it should
be obvious what is up.

> Any insight on this potential problem would be appreciated.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Todd
> 
> -- 
> Dr. Todd Ruskell
> Senior Lecturer, Department of Physics       Office:  Meyer Hall 326
> Colorado School of Mines                     Phone: 303-384-2080
> 1523 Illinois Street                         Fax: 303-273-3919
> Golden, CO 80401
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-- 
guy at albertelli.com   0-7-0-6-27,137