configure timezone and DST settings

Question

I'd like my raspbian to switch to european summertime (timezone Berlin) automatically. I've already configured the timezone to Europe/Berlin with dpkg-reconfigure tzdata and the current settings are correct. I'm currently using ntpdate -s de.pool.ntp.org to update my time on reboot and every 6 hours through a cronjob (the ntp service has been removed because the server component isn't needed).

However I'm not sure if my raspbian will switch to summertime automatically next sunday and I'd like to make sure it does because I don't want to wait another half year to check if it's working ;)

Can I check somehow if and when the clock will enable or disable DST? Is it possible to configure my raspbian to do that automatically if it's not already configured?

Answer 1

I'd like to make sure it does because I don't want to wait another half year to check if it's working

There's two possibilities here:

• The change will happen because your NTP servers change. There's no way for you to check that. I doubt this is the case though, because I think NTP servers all use GMT which does not change.

• The change will happen because the system itself calculates this. If that is the case and it doesn't work, it is pretty easy to test whenever you want: take the system offline or disable ntpd, set the time to right before the change, and see what happens.

You could in fact do that test right now, and if it doesn't work, you need to do more research. If it does, then case closed. Although I don't know anything about the mechanism, I suspect it will because I have linux machines that do not run ntpd (i.e., they just have the time set and rely on a hardware RTC) which do change time for daylight savings automatically.