[tz] Beginner's help request

Daniel Ford dfnojunk at gmail.com
Fri Nov 3 01:54:50 UTC 2017


Zefram,

Ah yes, I'd forgotten about the 'version' file; definitely the way to check
for updates.

Thanks for the clarification about the zone1970.tab contents.  So maybe I
can program the clock to make a once-only access to a TZdb mirror for that
file, at first start-up, to fetch the region/cities list for the owner to
choose from.  If something ever changed to make that choice invalid, there
could be a service routine in the firmware that allowed the user to re-do
this once-only download for a new region/city selection.  (Whew, things are
getting complicated! :-)

But the most exciting part of your e-mail was the mention of the IETF
working group!  I went there and found that they had concluded their work
and issued RFC7808.  I downloaded that and read it, and think that the
"expand" Action is just what I'm looking for!  So all I need to do is find
one or more TZDIST servers that look like they should be around for the
long-term.

To my (simple) way of thinking, it would make sense if (some) NTP servers
added this TZDIST functionality, so they became a 'one-stop-shop' for
current time information, but whether they have/will is another matter.
I'll start looking.

Thanks again for the tip-off.

Regards,
Daniel



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