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QNX BACKGROUND INFORMATION
TIME ZONES AND THE REAL-TIME CLOCK
D - 6
I-E96-107-2N
®
Starting a DOS
Start a DOS file system to access DOS floppies and partitions.
This requires that the QNX file system be running with a driver
for the floppy and/or hard disk:
Dosfsys &
Selecting a cron
server
If you think this machine will rarely be rebooted, you may also
select a cron server:
cron &
Starting a clock
Start a clock that will always display the time in the upper
right corner of the screen:
clock -f green “+%X” &
Supporting Non-USA Keyboards
By default, the QNX console driver assumes a 101-key USA
keyboard layout. However, QNX provides a variety of configu-
rations corresponding to the keyboards most commonly used
throughout the world. If you need to select an alternate key-
board configuration, you use the “kbd” utility.
If you select a non-USA keyboard when installing QNX on a
hard disk machine, the appropriate “kbd” command will be
added to the machine’s “sysinit.
node
” file. If you subsequently
set up workstations, you will have to change their
“sysinit.
node
” files to include this command.
Note that you can also generate custom keyboard layouts with
the “kedit” utility.
TIME ZONES AND THE REAL-TIME CLOCK
It is important that the correct date, time, and time zone infor-
mation be established early during initialization. This should
be the first step in your system initialization file. The install
program assumes your hardware clock has a valid date and
time and asks you for the time zone information.
Internally, QNX uses Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), which
is often referred to as Greenwich Mean Time. Applications and
utilities convert a local time by using information about your
time zone.
NOTE: If the time zone is not set, QNX will assume that local time is
the same as UTC time. This would present a problem only if you wish
to transfer files to another system in a different time zone. In this
case, the dates on the file will appear to be shifted by the difference
between the two time zones. If you plan to use QNX’s update system
to download new software, the time zone should be set correctly.