Re: Data, Time, and all that.

[Tass Mailing List <tass@mail.alembic.net>]

Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2007 13:45:49 -0600
From: Robert Creager <Robert_Creager@LogicalChaos.org>
To: Tass Mailing List <tass@mail.alembic.net>
Subject: Re: Data, Time, and all that.

Tass Mailing List wrote:
> Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2007 09:05:16 -0500
> From: Thomas F. Droege <droege@fastmail.fm>
> To: tass@tass-survey.org
> Subject: Data, Time, and all that.
>
> I ran last night.  Now the question is, how is it time stamped?  My
> fancy watch sprung forward as it should have and now reads the correct
> local time.  My data taking computers which are running on NTP did not.
> My fancy alarm clock which is supposed to set itself from Bolder did not
> spring forward.  I thought it and the wrist watch worked from the same
> source, sigh!

I'm surprised your watch sprang forward.  Is a new?  The embedded hardware knows
that on specific dates it needs to change time.  When the morons who we elected
changed the DST dates, it invalidated most of that hardware.

>
> Since the computer time did not change on the data taking computers (I
> just checked one since the others are up in the dome) I assume that the
> times in the data should be OK.  What do you all think?  Rob?  Michael?
> Should we segregate the next two weeks of data until it can somehow be
> checked?

You would of needed to update your systems for the wall clock to show correctly.
 But, the software should be using GMT for the image date/times, so there should
be no problem.

What will be affected, if you used it, was my method in the example script for
when to start and stop the data taking.  I just looked at it uses timezones,
which means it'll be off until your systems show the correct time.

>
> Time is fun.  It is not so easy.

Time is easy, it's policy that makes it hard ;-)

To update your systems, you'll want to get familiar with DrakConf - Software
Management - Update/fixes.  It'll probably ask you to contact some servers (you
do have Internet access?).  I'm hoping when you search on timezone, it'll come
up with the proper update.

If you wanted to upgrade to 2007, that would fix it, but probably break lots of
other things ;-)

Cheers,
Rob

--
Ride like a bull, eat like a pig, sleep like a baby.