Can't set the timezone for "date".

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hi, coreutils!

I'm having problems with my date.  My system is basically Debian Sarge
GNU/Linux.  uname -a gives this:

    Linux acm 2.6.8 #7 Wed May 23 18:12:53 BST 2007 i686 GNU/Linux

and date --version gives this:

    date (coreutils) 5.2.1
    



When I do this (as root):

    # date

, I get this printed:

    Sat Jul 21 15:37:34 BST 2007
               ^^       ^^^
.  (BST, "British Summer Time" means Prague time, UTC + 1 hour.)  What I
would like to see printed is something like this:

    Sat Jul 21 14:37:34 GMT 2007
               ^^       ^^^
, though I'd be happy enough with "UTC" instead of "GMT".

I'm not aware of exactly what it is on my system that decides to display
dates with "BST".  The variable TZ was null.  I have tried setting TZ to
"GMT", "UTC", "0000" and even "asdf", none of which makes the slightest
difference.  I have tried "set | grep BST".

Earlier in the day I had changed my /etc/timezone file from
"Europe/London" to "GMT" and rebooted.  This made not a blind bit of
difference.  Is there some dstardly setting somewhere which I haven't
set, and has decided I really want "Summer Time" (aka daylight saving
time)?

I can't find anything at all int the info file for date, sh-utils.info,
"This manual minimally documents version 1.16 of the GNU shell
utilities" about setting timezones.  I think this is a bug of omission
in the manual.  

So please, somebody, tell me what I have to configure to get my dates
printed out as GMT.

Also, my CMOS clock seems to have gained about half an hour over the
last year.  Looking at various scripts in rc[0123456S].d, it seems that
Debian Linux overwrites the CMOS clock every time it shuts down.  Damned
arrogance that, if you ask me!  I'm confused as to why this is done, and
feeling pretty fed up about it.  As a bonus, if anybody can explain to
me what's going on here, I'd be very grateful.

Also, is there _any_ pertinent documentation of all this stuff anywhere?
Any info file or man page that documents TZ, for example?

Thanks in advance for the forthcoming help!

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Ittersbach, Germany).