Thunderbird calendar plugin and daylight savings
 

Hi,

So I have thunderbird working with the lightning calendar plugin. Daylight savings time has all my repeating events showing up an hour earlier than they should -- is there any way to fix this without going through each and every event and task to change the time?

Thanks!

Um, is this just an inconceivable problem or have I not been specific enough? Essentially all the events in my calendar are shown an hour earlier than they should be. So my 9 o'clock events are showing up as 8 o'clock events, ever since daylight savings time kicked in. The time changed on its own, but it seemed to see the events as fixed to system time rather than relative time. Is there another forum I should go to for help on this?

Thanks

It certainly isn't an inconceivable problem, but to be honest, but I do suspect that the individual events are the problem and not Lightning. As far as I know, Lightning is unaware of time and is simply processing the information it gets from the individual events. The fact that it is only impacting your recurring events also suggests that it isn't a system problem.

Hi,

So I don't really understand what you mean. It's not only affecting the recurring events, it's affecting all the events, but I used the recurring events as an example to show that I didn't just put the event in at the wrong time. I had all the events set at the right time, then daylight savings time changed the time, and now the events are at the wrong time. Do you know of any way I could go about trying to fix this? I mean, the time change happens every year, it seems like something the program should be prepared for.

Thanks

OK, if it is affecting everything, then it likely is a system problem. However, there is no Lightning specific time settings, it is going off of your system time and time zone information. You may want to check the date command and see if anything looks incorrect.

So here's the thing. Lightning knows what time it is. But in the calendar it has moved the events to the wrong time. So the events that the calendar previously showed happening at 9, now it shows happening at 8. So when it actually is 8, Lightning says "hey, it's 8, you should go here". Problem is I don't have to go there until 9, since the event happens at 9. So why would it have the time correct, but have moved all of my events up an hour?

Yes, I get this. Restating the same thing over and over doesn't help. Since I'm not sitting at your computer I need you to look at stuff and post new information. That is why I asked you to look at the date command output. If it is correct, then the your machine is correct and we can worry about Lightning. I've been using Lightning for several years as my calendar and I've never seen this happen, which to me suggests that there is something goofy either on your machine as a whole or in the way you've configured Lightning. Do I know what is wrong with your machine? No, and from what I've seen googling, neither does anyone else. That is why I'm asking you to do things, to try and confirm or rule out possibilities. So if you wish to continue, have a look at the date output and if that is correct, have a look at your Lightning configuration (Edit > Preferences > Lightning) and make sure the time zone is correct.

Hi,

Sorry, I don't mean to appear obstinate. I realize you are not sitting at my computer which is why I have been trying to clarify the situation.

System date shows EST (correct) and Lightning timezone is set to America/NY (also EST). Should either mention daylight savings?

Do you run lightning? Do you have daylight savings time? What happened on the switch for you?

If it helps, this is exactly what happened when I changed timezones. All my events which I had entered for the correct local time (say 9 am) got moved when I changed timezone (to, for example, 3am), so that they were still at the same time relative to Grenwich Mean, but not to my new timezone.

Does this happen with your lightning? Seems like a flaw to me, because how many things in life actually happen with reference to GMT rather than local time?

At this point, I don't think so since we've made the switch off of daylight savings.

Yes, I do run lightning and have for several years. I've gone through the switch a number of times and have never had anything like this happen. This also happens to be the reason why I'm a bit stumped.

Hm. That might help. By any chance do you have your system clock set to UTC? I'm not sure how Debian stores this information (in Slackware it is in the /etc/hardwareclock file). I've always used localtime for the system clock rather than UTC, so if you're set to UTC, that might explain some of this.

Like I said, it has never happened to me in Lightning. However, I do find the reference to GMT to be rather useful as I'm frequently meeting with people in wildly different time zones. Given that places like the UK move off of daylight savings time a week earlier than in the US, GMT can be extremely useful.

Ok, I think I fixed it. Each event had a timezone, and each of these was set to America/New York. So I set the timezone of each event to "local" instead, and that got them into the right time. Don't know why, but now I know when I create an event to make sure it's in "local" time.

Thanks for all of your help, I appreciate you putting so much time into this strange and boggling issue.

I'm glad you figured out a solution. You're right, this one was kind of weird.