Finally using boot parameters is not a good solution. The reason is that doing this, timezone is reset at each boot even if it was changed and recorded using live persistence. Thus a better option seems to be to disable timezone using the « notimezone » boot option. Timezone is then set using both fiels previously listed.

This problem is certainly more general: every setting done at boot time may overwrite recorded settings in live persistence…

Right now it is possible to have a nice graphical interface using the Gnome frontend of DebConf:

$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure --frontend gnome tzdata

Should certainly add an icon to launch it.

The DoudouLinux time is wrong in France since it is always GMT+0000 instead of +0100 or +0200. Unfortunately system time zoen cannot be adjusted easily, it is invoked using the following command:

# dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

This will ask user (admininstrator) for continent then country. The modified files are:

• “/etc/timezone”, text file containing time zone only (eg. “Europe/Paris”)

• “/etc/localtime”, binary file known as “timezone data” by file magic

Moreover, the computer clock (aka. hardware clock) may use GMT or local time, especially when a Windows system is installed. This is set in “/etc/default/rcS”. Reading hardware clock as GMT as it is actually local will undoubtedly cause lots of mistakes…

As a first step, these three files should be included into live images for a given country. Afterwards it would be nice to have an interface to set it up (read postinst script of package tzdata to know how to write this!). Finally this is clear that one day when an online live image builder is available, time zone is a parameter to be set.