The following options apply to most functions.

       --utc

       --localtime
              Indicates that the Hardware Clock is kept in Coordinated Univer‐
              sal Time or local time, respectively.  It is your choice whether
              to keep your clock in UTC or local  time,  but  nothing  in  the
              clock tells which you’ve chosen.  So this option is how you give
              that information to hwclock.

              If you specify the wrong one of these options (or  specify  nei‐
              ther and take a wrong default), both setting and querying of the
              Hardware Clock will be messed up.

              If you specify neither --utc nor --localtime ,  the  default  is
              whichever  was  specified  the last time hwclock was used to set
              the clock (i.e. hwclock was successfully run with  the  --set  ,
              --systohc  ,  or  --adjust  options), as recorded in the adjtime
              file.  If the adjtime file doesn’t exist, the default  is  local
              time.