Issues w/ timezones on gssftpd

[Russ Allbery]

Philip Prindeville <philipp at redfish-solutions.com> writes:

> As for why not copy the /etc/localtime file? Because some people do some
> odd things, such as setting TZ in startup scripts, wrappers, etc. before
> firing up ftpd.  In that case, if the copy of /etc/localtime in the
> chroot() environment (such as /var/ftp) disagrees with the contents of
> "TZ", then you're going to get unexpected and possibly undefined
> behavior.

> Calling tzset() before calling ctime()/localtime()/strftime() *or*
> chroot() is the simplest solution that offers consistent behavior in all
> scenarios.

Okay, I think I understand now.

Why not just call tzset unconditionally, in that case?  Are there
platforms that don't have that function, or where it would cause harm?

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra at stanford.edu)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>