On Thursday 23 October 2003 08:59, Michael Havens wrote:
> You know,
> Someone helped me to get this going awhile ago but since then I had to
> reinstall my system and I didn't bother to write down the procedure (i'=
m
> bothering now). Could someone help me get nist.pl (or another time sett=
ing
> device) going?

Hi Michael,
     That would be me. Unfortunately, I'm in Wuhan, (People's Republic of=
)=20
China for the next two weeks so the telephone conversation we did last ti=
me=20
won't be possible. But perhaps with the previous success under your belt,=
=20
it'll be easier this time?
     I just converted the settings in nist.pl to work here (where the loc=
al=20
time is +8 hours ahead of GMT instead of -7 as in AZ). Here's a brief sum=
mary=20
of what you'll need to do.
     1) Edit nist.pl with some text editor such as gedit. Depending on wh=
ich=20
distribution you have, this may be easy or hard to locate. (Editors such =
as=20
Emacs and Vi are notoriously difficult at first. I'd suggest avoiding the=
m.)
     2) Using the editor, open the nist.pl file and locate the line that=20
starts with:
$timediff =3D ....
     3) Change that line so it looks like this:
$timediff =3D '-07:00:00';=09=09=09# time differance (Arizona)
     4) Similarly, find the "$timeserver" line and make it look like this=
:
$timeserver =3D 'time_a.timefreq.bldrdoc.gov';=09# time server
     5) And make the #1 line of the file EXACTLY like this (no spaces!):
#!/usr/bin/perl
     6) Save the changes and exit from the editor.
     7) Next, you'll need a shell. How you launch a shell may depend on t=
he=20
distribution you are running but, on my Red Hat 8.0 system, I do a=20
*RIGHT*-click in the background and then a *LEFT* click on "New Terminal"=
=2E
     8) In that shell, "cd" to the directory where you have the modified=20
nist.pl file.
     9) Type the following command to make "nist.pl" executable:
chmod +x nist.pl
    10) And, (with your system connected to the network) set the time:
=2E/nist.pl

     If you get stuck or something doesn't work, you might try taking the=
=20
system to one of the PLUG meetings. The members are all very helpful and =
I'm=20
sure they can help. An added benefit is that, by watching someone do "mag=
ic"=20
to your system, you can always stop them and ask, "why did you do that?"=20
Always a VERY good thing to do!
     Zaijian!

--=20
Ed Skinner, ed@flat5.net, http://www.flat5.net/