Re: [Qemu-devel] Changing RTC from UTC to local time

[Tim <tim-qemu@sentinelchicken.org>]

> You can set a PC's RTC to UTC or any other time zone for that matter if 
> you want to. However, according to the original design (dating back to 
> the olden days of the first IBM PC), the RTC should be running in local 
> time.

Probably makes sense to make this the default.

> I guess one could make this a runtime option. But that would only 
> clutter the command line, as there would be one more parameter just to 
> set the RTC's time zone. A compile time option makes much more sense 
> IMHO. However, this would only benefit very few people as most people 
> download binaries.
> 
> Keeping in mind that Linux and *BSD both can deal with a standard PC RTC 
> running in local time, are you sure that QEMU really needs the option of 
> having the RTC run in UTC?

It is difficult to anticipate future uses of any piece of software.  I
can think of a few cases where I would want to set this behavior on a
case-by-case basis, for example, running an OS that was installed on
real hardware originally.  Therefore, if it were to come down to a vote,
I would say it should be a command line option.  The patch submitted 
earlier illustrates how trivial it would be to make it configurable at
runtime.


As for a cluttered command line.. yes, I agree it is getting cluttered.
In addition, the current syntax will eventually limit future emmulated
hardware (scsi bus, more than 4 IDE disks, etc).  Is there any effort
currently in the works to move the command line options into a config
file for more versatile runtime configuration?  When I find time, I
might work on this, if no one else has started it...

tim