[Solved] KDE settings (mainly clock and tiling)

[owend]

Hi, I'm a long-term Linuxer, using Mint for the last 3 years. I'm trying to find a KDE distro, and I'm really impressed with PCLOS (2011.6) so far, still testing but probably going to go fulltime in another few days. Mostly impressed, but two (so far!) unsolvable, minor, glitches - sorry if they're answered on the Forum, I couldn't find any answers. If this is in the wrong place, let me know and please move it! This may be my lack of familiarity with KDE - I've been Gnome until now!

Firstly, the clock settings: date and time clear and current, except that time is 1 hour behind the correct. I'm in England, where we've got British Summer Time for another week, after which the time will probably be correct. But until then, and for next year, how do I set the clock to BST? I can change the time manually, but at the next reboot it reverts to the wrong time: it shows 6.05pm now, when it's actually 7.05pm.

Secondly, I like the KDE feature of tiling open programs, but it seems only some programs accept tiling - eg Firefox LibreOffice and Dolphin are good, open FF and then Dolphin and they both occupy half a screen each; open LO and it "spirals" fine (I probably won't open more than two programs at a time). But Konsole, System Monitor, Kwrite and doubtless others open at full screen. Have I missed a trick, or does the tiling only work for some programs?

Thanks,

Owen

[Bald Brick]

Firstly, the clock settings: date and time clear and current, except that time is 1 hour behind the correct. I'm in England, where we've got British Summer Time for another week, after which the time will probably be correct. But until then, and for next year, how do I set the clock to BST? I can change the time manually, but at the next reboot it reverts to the wrong time: it shows 6.05pm now, when it's actually 7.05pm.

This seems to be a new variation of a frequently asked question.  

Traditionally the hardware clock (BIOS clock) on a Linux system has been set to UTC/GMT and the software has converted the time to local time when setting the system time -- also taking care of the change to summer time and back.

But nowadays the hardware clock is often set to local time simply because many people are dual-booting Linux and Windows and Windows expects the hardware clock to be set to local time. And in that case Linux has to be made aware of this.

So:

1) Do you sometimes boot into Windows?

2) What do the files /etc/sysconfig/clock and /etc/adjtime look like on your box? Please post their contents. After that we'll know how to fix your problem.

[owend]

Thanks for reply, Bald Brick. Answers: firstly, I don't have Windows on the computer at all, so obviously never boot it.

Secondly: contents of /etc/sysconfig/clock:

UTC=false
ARC=false
ZONE=Europe/London

and of /etc/adjtime:

971.059047 1318354618 0.000000
1318354618
LOCAL

It's still an hour late!

Owen

[menotu]

Thought I'd just drop by and say welcome to the forum owend from another UK user, it's lovely to have you with us.

Mind you, this is coming from the future as my clock is correct 

[Bald Brick]

Thanks for reply, Bald Brick. Answers: firstly, I don't have Windows on the computer at all, so obviously never boot it.

Secondly: contents of /etc/sysconfig/clock:

UTC=false
ARC=false
ZONE=Europe/London

and of /etc/adjtime:

971.059047 1318354618 0.000000
1318354618
LOCAL

It's still an hour late!

Owen

This may be harder than usually. A couple of years ago we had a lengthy thread where one user simply couldn't get his system to believe that the hardware clock wasn't set to UTC.

In that case the problem might have been that the hardware clock refused to synchronise to the system clock at shutdown.

We'll never know, because in the end he admitted defeat and and edited both /etc/sysconfig/clock and etc/adjtime accordingly, which means that he simply changed the first line in/etc/sysconfig/clock so that it read "UTC=true" (instead of "UTC=false") and the third line in /etc/adjtime so that it read "UTC" (instead of "LOCAL"). If you never boot into Windows you could try the same thing.

But whether you want to set your hardware clock to your local time or to UTC should be your choice, not your system's. When you changed the time manually, where did you do it?



And of course I should have said "welcome to the forum" in my last post. So: welcome to the forum, owend!

[Texstar]

Dang time travelers! Can you boot into your computer bios and check to make sure the time is correct and not off by an hour?

[Tony]

Yes, welcome to the PCLinuxOS Forum owend  

I was interested what the outcome was going to be then that, ... distraction.
1.) As I've just reset all my time pieces, for Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) daylight saving time, Australia.
2.) I'm sure however I didn't have to manually change the time on my fully PCLinuxOS MiniMe system. i.e. I didn't set the clock forward manually 1 hour.
3.) The Digital clock settings are set to my City.

Lets know what the outcome is, please.

[owend]

Thanks for the comments, a bit surreal coming from the future, but after all today is yesterday's tomorrow, and tomorrow, today will be yesterday and tomorrow will become, er, today. I think. Anyway, my watch says 7.30pm, my computer still says 6.30pm.

Bald Brick, I (tried to) set the time by rightclicking the date/time applet and choosing "adjust...". I'm going to edit the /etc/sysconfig/clock file to set UTC = TRUE; I'll let you know in a few minutes.

Owen

[owend]

No change, still an hour adrift.

[Bald Brick]

Yes, welcome to the PCLinuxOS Forum owend  

I was interested what the outcome was going to be then that, ... distraction.
1.) As I've just reset all my time pieces, for Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) daylight saving time, Australia.

And by that, I take it, you mean that you've set all your clocks including your computer's system clock to EDT? The problem, however, is that your computer has two main clocks: the system clock and the hardware clock.

The system clock keeps time reasonably well, but only when the computer is running. (How it does it is a more complex matter and involves even more "clocks".) The hardware clock is usually less reliable, but a battery keeps it running when the computer is powered down.

Normally the hardware clock is only used at boot, and then to set the system clock. After that it's usually synchronised to the system clock at shutdown. (You can synchronise either clock to the other whenever you want, but this won't happen by default.)

But in many cases a problem arises from the fact that the two clocks, even if synchronised, doesn't necessarily show the same time. The system clock should always show the official local time. The hardware clock may be set to either UTC or local time. If it's set to UTC, its time must be converted to local time when the system clock is set, and whether it is or not it has to be converted to summer time when necessary.

Traditionally the hardware clock on a Linux system is set to UTC, but for the benefit of dual-booters Linux will gladly convert between UTC and local time if told to do so.

Now it seems that in owend's case the system was told not to do that conversion: his hardware clock is set to local time. The only conversion necessary should be to summer time so long as that lasts. Nevertheless his local time is off by one hour after a reboot and we have to find out why.

2.) I'm sure however I didn't have to manually change the time on my fully PCLinuxOS MiniMe system. i.e. I didn't set the clock forward manually 1 hour.

You shouldn't have to if everything works and your time zone is set up correctly. Which it seems to be:

3.) The Digital clock settings are set to my City.

Lets know what the outcome is, please.

[Bald Brick]

No change, still an hour adrift.

I take it you also rebooted afterwards. And did you also edit /etc/adjtime?

[Bald Brick]

Bald Brick, I (tried to) set the time by rightclicking the date/time applet and choosing "adjust...".

What this means is a bit unclear to me. You should preferably set the time in PCC (Configure Your Computer), but you can also do it in System Settings (Configure Your Desktop), by right-clicking the KDE Digital Clock widget or another clock widget, in a terminal, or directly in the BIOS. I don't have a date/time applet (although I may have had one when I still ran Cairo-dock or KDE3).

But wherever you set your system time, the problem seems to be that your changes don't survive a reboot, which to me indicates that the hardware clock isn't properly synchronized at shutdown, and in that case changing the locale settings won't really help. But I may be wrong.

Edited.

[Tony]

Yes, welcome to the PCLinuxOS Forum owend  

I was interested what the outcome was going to be then that, ... distraction.
1.) As I've just reset all my time pieces, for Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) daylight saving time, Australia.

And by that, I take it, you mean that you've set all your clocks including your computer's system clock to EDT? The problem, however, is that your computer has two main clocks: the system clock and the hardware clock.
No I didn't Bald Brick,
Actually some misunderstanding:
As a KDE user, I was illustrating my experience: I did not have to change the TIME in my 'Digital Clock Settings', which lives in my 'Panel'. It switched by itself, as far as I remember.

Now it seems that in owend's case the system was told not to do that conversion: his hardware clock is set to local time. The only conversion necessary should be to summer time so long as that lasts. Nevertheless his local time is off by one hour after a reboot and we have to find out why.

2.) I'm sure however I didn't have to manually change the time on my fully PCLinuxOS MiniMe system. i.e. I didn't set the clock forward manually 1 hour.

You shouldn't have to if everything works and your time zone is set up correctly. Which it seems to be:
True

3.) The Digital clock settings are set to my City.
Right Click the Time, mine is located on the far right of the'Panel' > Digital Clock Settings.
> In The Area called 'Time Zones' select the location you live.
My 'Digital clock settings' are then synched I would guess with a server, as it adjusted itself when daylight saving commenced here, on the East coast of Australia.

Edit: I've just run Synaptic. Guess what was updated ?  
Commit Log for Thu Oct 13 17:23:23 2011


Upgraded the following packages:
timezone (2011g-1pclos2011) to 2011k-1pclos2011
__________________________________________________________________________
Good luck owend.
Maybe you should update your system 

[owend]

I thought I was the challenged one, not the computer, when Francis reminded me of updates. But after updating Timezone and rebooting, I'm still an hour adrift . BIOS setting is the hour-adrift time, ie the same as the panel time, but it always has been, and Mint (and other distros, I play around!) always correct for BST.

Bald Brick: yes, i rebooted after altering settings. No, I didn't change /etc/adjtime, I didn't know what to alter - it now shows

971.059047 1318491357 0.000000
1318491357
LOCAL

How should I change it?

Thanks for all the advice, everyone. I know it's not the end of the world, but as a migrant to PCLOS and KDE I have a few things to learn!

Owen

[Bald Brick]

I thought I was the challenged one, not the computer, when Francis reminded me of updates. But after updating Timezone and rebooting, I'm still an hour adrift . BIOS setting is the hour-adrift time, ie the same as the panel time, but it always has been, and Mint (and other distros, I play around!) always correct for BST.

So the BIOS clock is set to GMT/UTC? That used to be the default in Linux before people started dual-booting.

Bald Brick: yes, i rebooted after altering settings. No, I didn't change /etc/adjtime, I didn't know what to alter - it now shows

971.059047 1318491357 0.000000
1318491357
LOCAL

How should I change it?

You should replace LOCAL with UTC (the third line) -- if you've changed UTC=false to UTC=true in /etc/sysconfig/clock.

Thanks for all the advice, everyone. I know it's not the end of the world, but as a migrant to PCLOS and KDE I have a few things to learn!

Owen

Two lines in the script /etc/rc.d/init.d/halt should synchronise the BIOS clock to system time when you shut down the computer. It seems that in your case this synchronisation doesn't happen.