On Mon, Feb 21, 2000 at 11:57:08AM -0500, Dean Brooks wrote:
> A mail system is one that inherently deals with time stamps a *lot*.
True, and that's why there's a need for consistency. This thread started
off because someone found a bug which was leading to weird log entries
that become difficult to trace. Philip mentioned that it might be
difficult to fix, and that's why people are offering opinions on the
"right" way to do it.
> The real issue of the discussion is not so much should logfiles be
> logged in UTC; rather, it's about whether Exim should give the
> administrator a *choice* in timezone format.
>
> While logging in GMT/UTC is "elegant" and is also "right", it is not
> convenient, nor is it practical when things are going awry and you
> have to match up times (for whatever reason) very quickly.
Again see above. If you have a log file with such odd entries in them,
you'll have difficulty trying to locate your problem. That's when
standardised logging wins. Tell me, why does unix keep time internally
as simply an increasing integer? It leaves the user to choose the way
they want their time displayed. I believe that MTAs like exim too,
should simply timestamp using the system counter; when viewing the logs,
we pipe them through a converter to see the time in the timezone of our
choice. So, as the administrator, exim doesn't need to give you any
choices, because you already have them!
Anyway, all this talk of time reminds me that I have to go home now. See
you tomorrow.
