On Wed, 25 Jun 2003 dsavage@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote: > Yeah, I could. I could also use md5sum if I had two local copies. But that > wasn't why I asked the question. Ok > One reason for using an ftp client like gftp that sets the date/time to > match the source is that I know at a glance if the distant end has > changed. Trouble was, when I looked at the two files I downloaded, bash > listed them as "June 25 2003" rather than "June 25 11:17". > > In all the years I've been using ftp to download files (and touch to sync > their date/timestamps) I can't recall ever running into this before. Have > I just been "lucky" and never downloaded something sooner than the GMT > offset since its creation, or is what I encountered this morning really > wrong? AFAIK you have been lucky. See below. > I may be asking this question poorly, and without complete knowledge of > how file dates/times are actually stored and displayed. But it seems to me > that when I log onto a remote web site with ftp and see a file's > date/time, there should be no ambiguity as to whether it's in local or > universal time. As another responder has noted, e-mail clients (for > example) are able to handle time zone information correctly. I tend to agree with you but AFAIK that is not the way ftp works. All dates and times on any *nix os that I know of are stored in gmt. How they get displayed is dependant on how your machine is setup. For instance if I do an: ll --full-time total 24 drwxrwsr-x 2 200 200 4096 2003-06-25 07:17:54.000000000 -0400 SRPMS drwxrwsr-x 2 200 200 4096 2003-06-03 05:09:14.000000000 -0400 athlon drwxrwsr-x 2 200 200 4096 2003-06-25 07:17:47.000000000 -0400 i386 drwxrwsr-x 2 200 200 4096 2003-06-03 05:07:58.000000000 -0400 i586 drwxrwsr-x 2 200 200 4096 2003-06-03 05:09:21.000000000 -0400 i686 drwxrwsr-x 2 200 200 4096 2003-04-24 16:35:04.000000000 -0400 noarch (icarus pts9) # As you can see above the times are displayed -0400. This is on my ftp site. If I login to the ftp site using a client like ncftp I get the following: ncftp .../linux/updates/9/en/os > ls -l drwxrwsr-x 2 200 200 4096 Jun 25 11:17 SRPMS drwxrwsr-x 2 200 200 4096 Jun 3 09:09 athlon drwxrwsr-x 2 200 200 4096 Jun 25 11:17 i386 drwxrwsr-x 2 200 200 4096 Jun 3 09:07 i586 drwxrwsr-x 2 200 200 4096 Jun 3 09:09 i686 drwxrwsr-x 2 200 200 4096 Apr 24 20:35 noarch ncftp .../linux/updates/9/en/os > As you can see the times are 4 hrs different from each other. Does that help with your question? -- ......Tom Registered Linux User #14522 http://counter.li.org tdiehl@xxxxxxxxxxxx My current SpamTrap -------> mtd123@xxxxxxxxxxxx
