Re: [Freeipmi-devel] [bug #38798] timestamps are interpretted as UT rather than localtime, violating IPMI 2.0 section 37

[Rob Swindell]

I for one think that's a great idea. Do you happen to know of BMCs which 
actually support the "Get SEL Time UTC Offset" command?

One point of frequent confusion is that there are actually 3 potential 
interpretations of a time-stamp:
1. Local time for the managed system/BMC
2. Local time for the management console
3. UTC

The IPMI specification defines time-stamps sent from the management controller 
as format #1. If the management console can get the managed system's UTC offset 
(e.g. using "Get SEL Time UTC Offset"), then it could convert the timestamps 
from format #1 to either #2 or #3 (for display, storage or comparison purposes).

-Rob

-----Original Message-----
From: address@hidden [mailto:address@hidden On Behalf Of Liebig, Holger
Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2013 10:51 PM
To: address@hidden
Subject: Re: [Freeipmi-devel] [bug #38798] timestamps are interpretted as UT 
rather than localtime, violating IPMI 2.0 section 37

Al,
If this gets fixed (and if possible) could you please include handling of the 
optional Get SEL Time UTC offset command introduced in Errata 4? This can be 
used to convert non localtime timestamps back to calendar time and come in 
handy when a BMC is configured to use a NTP server. From calendar time you can 
then convert it to localtime or UTC using the appropriate libc functions 
(localtime_r() and gmtime_r()). And as generic improvement: customers with 
BMC's around the world might appreciate a command line option to display SEL 
timestamps in GMT in addition to localtime in order to correlate events to each 
other.

Thanks,
Holger

> 
> URL:
>   <http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?38798>
> 
>                  Summary: timestamps are interpretted as UTC rather than
> localtime, violating IPMI 2.0 section 37
>                  Project: GNU FreeIPMI
>             Submitted by: rswindell
>             Submitted on: Mon 22 Apr 2013 04:33:14 AM GMT
>                 Category: ipmi-sel
>                 Severity: 3 - Normal
>                 Priority: 5 - Normal
>               Item Group: Improper Behaviour
>                   Status: None
>                  Privacy: Public
>              Assigned to: None
>              Open/Closed: Open
>          Discussion Lock: Any
>         Operating System: None
> 
>     _______________________________________________________
> 
> Details:
> 
> IPMI 2.0 section 37 ("Timestamp Format") states that all timestamps (e.g.
> for SDR repository and SEL) are "representing local time ... does not
> include GMT offset.", yet ipmi-sel and bmc-device interpret timestamps as
> though they are based on GMT/UTC and apply the local timezone bias before
> printing in human-readable form.
> 
> 
> 
> 
>     _______________________________________________________
> 
> Reply to this item at:
> 
>   <http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?38798>
> 
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