Today I noticed that on my new virtual server, the time was in MSD (Moscow Daylight Time). I then tried to enter the system-config-date command. It was not available, which I thought was odd. I’ve always used that to change the timezone, and never bothered to look up the configuration file that it edits.
So I did a yum install. To my amazement, this is what I saw:
Dependencies Resolved ==================================================================================================================================== Package Arch Version Repository Size ==================================================================================================================================== Installing: system-config-date noarch 1.8.12-4.el5.centos base 1.5 M Installing for dependencies: GConf2 i386 2.14.0-9.el5 base 1.5 M ORBit2 i386 2.14.3-5.el5 base 252 k alsa-lib i386 1.0.17-1.el5 base 412 k atk i386 1.12.2-1.fc6 base 222 k audiofile i386 1:0.2.6-5 base 107 k avahi i386 0.6.16-10.el5_6 updates 251 k avahi-glib i386 0.6.16-10.el5_6 updates 15 k bitstream-vera-fonts noarch 1.10-7 base 343 k cairo i386 1.2.4-5.el5 base 394 k cryptsetup-luks i386 1.0.3-5.el5 base 626 k dbus-glib i386 0.73-10.el5_5 base 161 k dbus-python i386 0.70-9.el5_4 base 160 k desktop-file-utils i386 0.10-7 base 59 k docbook-dtds noarch 1.0-30.1 base 677 k esound i386 1:0.2.36-3 base 129 k fontconfig i386 2.4.1-7.el5 base 174 k freetype i386 2.2.1-28.el5_5.1 base 312 k gamin i386 0.1.7-8.el5 base 118 k gnome-doc-utils noarch 0.8.0-2.fc6 base 252 k gnome-keyring i386 0.6.0-1.fc6 base 170 k gnome-mime-data i386 2.4.2-3.1 base 690 k gnome-mount i386 0.5-3.el5 base 70 k gnome-python2 i386 2.16.0-1.fc6 base 126 k gnome-python2-bonobo i386 2.16.0-1.fc6 base 63 k gnome-python2-canvas i386 2.16.0-1.fc6 base 23 k gnome-python2-gnomevfs i386 2.16.0-1.fc6 base 65 k gnome-vfs2 i386 2.16.2-6.el5_5.1 base 1.2 M gtk2 i386 2.10.4-21.el5_5.6 base 6.5 M hal i386 0.5.8.1-62.el5 base 395 k hicolor-icon-theme noarch 0.9-2.1 base 25 k hwdata noarch 0.213.22-1.el5 base 404 k kbd i386 1.12-21.el5 base 1.3 M libICE i386 1.0.1-2.1 base 54 k libIDL i386 0.8.7-1.fc6 base 85 k libSM i386 1.0.1-3.1 base 27 k libX11 i386 1.0.3-11.el5 base 796 k libXau i386 1.0.1-3.1 base 18 k libXcursor i386 1.1.7-1.1 base 32 k libXdmcp i386 1.0.1-2.1 base 19 k libXext i386 1.0.1-2.1 base 35 k libXfixes i386 4.0.1-2.1 base 14 k libXft i386 2.1.10-1.1 base 44 k libXi i386 1.0.1-4.el5_4 base 25 k libXinerama i386 1.0.1-2.1 base 9.7 k libXrandr i386 1.1.1-3.3 base 15 k libXrender i386 0.9.1-3.1 base 27 k libXres i386 1.0.1-3.1 base 14 k libXt i386 1.0.2-3.2.el5 base 173 k libart_lgpl i386 2.3.17-4 base 76 k libbonobo i386 2.16.0-1.1.el5_5.1 base 502 k libbonoboui i386 2.16.0-1.fc6 base 389 k libdaemon i386 0.10-5.el5 base 24 k libglade2 i386 2.6.0-2 base 96 k libgnome i386 2.16.0-6.el5 base 858 k libgnomecanvas i386 2.14.0-4.1 base 222 k libgnomeui i386 2.16.0-5.el5 base 978 k libnotify i386 0.4.2-6.el5 base 37 k libvolume_id i386 095-14.24.el5 base 44 k libwnck i386 2.16.0-4.fc6 base 185 k libxml2-python i386 2.6.26-2.1.2.8.el5_5.1 base 702 k libxslt i386 1.1.17-2.el5_2.2 base 485 k notification-daemon i386 0.3.5-9.el5 base 47 k openjade i386 1.3.2-27 base 980 k opensp i386 1.5.2-4 base 1.1 M pango i386 1.14.9-8.el5.centos.2 updates 334 k pciutils i386 3.1.7-3.el5 base 114 k pm-utils i386 0.99.3-10.el5.centos base 67 k pycairo i386 1.2.0-1.1 base 27 k pygobject2 i386 2.12.1-5.el5 base 95 k pygtk2 i386 2.10.1-12.el5 base 1.1 M pygtk2-libglade i386 2.10.1-12.el5 base 18 k pyorbit i386 2.14.1-3.el5 base 48 k python-numeric i386 23.7-2.2.2.el5_6.1 updates 748 k rhpl i386 0.194.1-1 base 242 k scrollkeeper i386 0.3.14-9.el5 base 294 k sgml-common noarch 0.6.3-18 base 40 k shared-mime-info i386 0.19-5.el5 base 148 k startup-notification i386 0.8-4.1 base 32 k wireless-tools i386 1:28-2.el5 base 92 k xml-common noarch 0.6.3-18 base 5.8 k xorg-x11-filesystem noarch 7.1-2.fc6 base 5.4 k xulrunner i386 1.9.2.17-3.el5 updates 12 M yelp i386 2.16.0-26.el5 base 581 k Transaction Summary ==================================================================================================================================== Install 84 Package(s) Upgrade 0 Package(s) Total download size: 42 M Is this ok [y/N]:
It wanted to install 83 dependancies all for a silly little ncurses shell command. Now I realize that this is the downside to using a pre-packaged linux distribution, but this seemed a bit excessive to me.
Thank god tools like yum exist, else I’d have given up on trying to install that thing very, very quickly, and resorted to readinng TFM on how to change timezones manually.