Re: Removing "CMOS clock set to UTC" question

On Wed, Jun 12, 2024 at 9:22 AM Ed Maste <emaste@freebsd.org> wrote:
>
> Our installer asks (via tzsetup):
>
> > Is this machine's CMOS clock set to UTC?  If it is set to local time,
> > or you don't know, please choose NO here!
>
> I've heard many reports of new users being confused by this question
> when installing FreeBSD for the first time. I don't think it provides
> much value; it is a minor convenience for dual-booting with Windows
> but imposes a cost on everyone installing FreeBSD. It is trivial to
> configure the system to use local time in the system's real-time clock
> by creating /etc/wall_cmos_clock. Other operating systems do not ask,
> they just default to local time (Windows) or UTC (everyone else).
You might want to replace the question with a one sentence note describing
the above. Every time I run into it, I spend about 10min remembering the
name /etc/wall_cmos_clock.

But, yea, I also never think about whether to answer yes or no and fix in later.

rick

>
> I've proposed removing the question from bsdinstall in
> https://reviews.freebsd.org/D45569.
>