Berkeley variant of time zone stuff

Guy Harris seismo!sun!guy
Mon Mar 30 17:01:04 UTC 1987


	The reason I put that code in was because I actually had the code
	running on a machine that I couldn't put the /etc/zoneinfo directory
	on.  And, for a couple of days, I got a first hand look at what happens
	when things are 8 hours off.  With the current code, it would
	require a major kernel problem to be more than an hour off.  Isn't
	that worth having?

Well, I don't know that it's that much better to be one hour off than
8 hours off.  Also, there are plenty of files that, if missing or
inaccessible, will cause UNIX some amount of distress; I'm not sure
the time zone files are worth singling out.  (E.g., why not put code
into "init" so that the system will work even if "getty" is missing
or won't work?  Why not put code into the kernel to try opening
"/dev/console" and running "/bin/sh" if "/etc/init" can't be found?)
In Olson's scheme, if the time zone files are inaccessible, it will
be pretty obvious and the administrator will find those files, by
hook or by crook.  I don't consider it that likely that they'd be
missing or inaccessible, either.



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