I was tinkering with things today, and copied Japan's time from my zoneinfo directory into /etc/localtime.
Then I tried to change back, and ever since I cannot get things to work. It's definitely not set to that time anymore, but I'm having major problems and I'm not sure what to do.
I reinstalled everything using the openSUSE 11.1 Live CD after this.
I don't understand what's wrong, I've been trying for a long time now to fix this. I went to date and time, and picked USA - Pacific (Los Angeles)
my /etc/localtime is this. in /etc/sysconfig/clock, I have:
HWCLOCK="-u"
SYSTOHC="no"
TIMEZONE="America/Los_Angeles"
DEFAULT_TIMEZONE="America/Los_Angeles"
If I cat /etc/localtime, at the bottom it shows:
PST8PDT,M3.2.0,M11.1.0 (which is the exact same as Los_Angeles - and it will report they are the same if I try to copy Los_Angeles to /etc/localtime)

With and without ntp, I can't get anything to work right - I first tried without using ntp, and then configured ntp. My clock now is set to 11:11 AM, but it's not entirely accurate. I changed it by hand to say this (it's within half a minute of the accurate time, I used Google - time.)
My ntp settings are:
Start NTP Daemon
Now and On Boot

Runtime configuration policy:
Auto

Synchronization Type Address
server us.pool.ntp.org

under security settings:
[x] Run NTP Daemon in Chroot Jail

If copying Japan's to /etc/localtime caused these changes, why wouldn't they be fixed by a fresh installation and America/Los_Angeles?
This is driving me insane.

Even stranger - and possibly unrelated - for the first time since I've been using openSUSE I just updated, which was a two-part update, and at the end of both runs of Update System, it says "Last update: a few days ago".
I haven't had any sort of problems like this since I started using openSUSE, and it's very strange, but the time setting is my fault ...
I think I'll install Ubuntu right now, again, but if you could help me at all I'd really appreciate it.

It's fixed now (this being my second username), but I don't know how to do it using openSUSE, I just grabbed my Ubuntu CD, since it changes the time, and installed it, and got the time right again, and since have reinstalled openSUSE with no problems.
I'm just surprised at how complex it seems now ... I've changed /etc/localtime before, and it just worked. Same with the configurations ...
now I'm staying away from tinkering with the time using openSUSE until I learn more (and even then, I don't have a reason to).

Also, I have noticed some time cross capability issues between SUSE and Ubuntu. See if your time changes from reboot into SUSE to reboot into Ubuntu. If so, maybe switching to UTC in SUSE if it is on Local Time might help

I'm now using Slackware and Ubuntu ... so I can't provide more information, unfortunately.