Bug 750244

Summary:	RFE: reflect that 'date' no longer sets the hardware clock
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	Kamil Páral <kparal>
Component:	coreutils	Assignee:	Pádraig Brady <p>
Status:	CLOSED UPSTREAM	QA Contact:	Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity:	unspecified	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	rawhide	CC:	kdudka, maxamillion, mschmidt, ovasik, p, twaugh
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Last Closed:	2011-11-02 11:48:46 UTC	Type:	---
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Description Kamil Páral 2011-10-31 13:01:55 UTC

Description of problem:
'date' command can no longer be used to set the hardware clock. It was never its true purpose, but it was a consequence and many system administrators rely on 'date' setting the hardware clock. From Fedora 16 that is no longer true, see bug #749516.

Please make adjustments in coreutils 'date' to reflect this change. Proposed changes:

1. Adjust date's man page to clearly state that this command sets system time, but not hardware time, and reference 'hwclock' command for the latter purpose.

2. If you consider it helpful, add a new CLI option to set the system clock and hardware clock in the same command, by internally calling hwclock in the end.

I think at least the first option would be very beneficial to implement.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
coreutils-8.12-2.fc16.i686

How reproducible:
see #749516

Comment 1 Pádraig Brady 2011-10-31 13:14:54 UTC

I'll adjust the documentation upstream, to be compatible with old and new behaviors. I'm not going to change or add "hardware" functionality as I don't think that is date's function.

Comment 2 Ondrej Vasik 2011-10-31 13:25:13 UTC

Thanks Pádraig.

Comment 3 Pádraig Brady 2011-11-02 11:48:46 UTC

I've applied this upstream http://git.sv.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=coreutils.git;a=commit;h=51286059