A shared server is configured for UTC and must stay that way. One analyst wants every timestamp printed in her own shell session, and by the commands she starts from it, to appear in Tokyo local time. What should she do?
LPIC-1 Exam 102-500, objective 107. Administrative tasks medium
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How these questions are written — where each question comes from, what the verification ledger records, and what happens when one is found wrong.
The options
Correct Export TZ=Asia/Tokyo in her shell
Correct. TZ is read by the C library's time conversion routines in each process, so exporting it changes how her shell and its children render times while leaving every other session on UTC.
Not correct Run `sudo timedatectl set-timezone Asia/Tokyo`
Wrong. That changes the system-wide default for every user and service by repointing /etc/localtime, which the scenario explicitly forbids.
Not correct Write Asia/Tokyo into /etc/timezone
Wrong on two counts: it is again a system-wide setting, and on its own it does not take effect, because the library reads the zone data through /etc/localtime rather than that text file.
Not correct Run `date -s '+9 hours'` at the start of each session
Wrong, and damaging. date -s sets the system clock itself, so it would shift real time for every user rather than change how it is displayed.
Why
Time in Linux is kept as a UTC-based count of seconds; a time zone is only a rendering rule applied when that count is converted to a human-readable form. TZ overrides the system default per process and can be given for a single command, as in `TZ=Asia/Tokyo date`. The system default lives in /etc/localtime, so changing it needs root and affects everyone.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- manual page tzset(3)
Practise this
Reading one question is not practice. The trainer will draw a short set from objective 107 and space the ones you get wrong.
More questions on this objective
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