Doctorin' the Tardis (and Timelord): The Revived AppleTalk Time Server

[mactjaap]

It's too bad the Tardis CDEV doesn't handle the timezone thing correctly. One workaround with the Timelord server is to have it create two instances on the network by default. One for UTC and one for server local time.

Exactly what I do on the MacIPRpi. I just run two instances. They fire up at boot so a user can choose which one to use. I guess that it must be able to do something with all timezones...but for now this is fine.

Here you see it in action:




Testing 1 2 3... On my development MacIPRpi.... works perfect!

 

[cheesestraws]

's too bad the Tardis CDEV doesn't handle the timezone thing correctly

The problem is more in early versions of MacOS' time zone handling, if I remember correctly. It's a while since I looked at this, but if you have 6.mumble.mumble or above and the Map control panel and the International stuff installed it works. If you have anything earlier than that, or don't have the right bits of System 6 installed, it doesn't. I'm not sure of any sensible way to query whether it will work or not under System 6—but perhaps there's a set of traps one could test for? It's a bit of a mess, unfortunately, and it's not all Tardis' fault.

 

[slipperygrey]

@mactjaap You are a hero and a saint! Thanks for tracking this down for us.

Running two separate time servers is a clever solution to the problem. Which time server does it sync with on bootup by default, in case you never go into the Chooser?

 

[cheesestraws]

Which time server does it sync with on bootup by default

Tardis stores the last server connected to, I think in a resource inside itself (?). A pristine Tardis won't attempt to connect to anything at all until you choose a time server for it to use. If it can't reach its configured time server at boot, it just beeps at you.

 

[slipperygrey]

Anyhow, I'm going to code the command line option now. In the spirit of not changing the established default behavior, I'm thinking of introducing an '-l' option for localtime, and let GMT be the default when no option is supplied. Thoughts?

 

[cheesestraws]

In the spirit of not changing the established default behavior, I'm thinking of introducing an '-l' option for localtime, and let GMT be the default when no option is supplied

Totally agree with this approach.

 

[slipperygrey]

So here is the result, ready for your review and testing: https://github.com/Netatalk/Netatalk/pull/147

It seems to work as intended in my environment! (Raspbian Bullseye, gcc 10)

 

[NJRoadfan]

Make sure to update the man page. Looks like they were generated from XML templates that were never in the tree back in the 2.2.x era.

 

[slipperygrey]

@NJRoadfan That's a great catch. I wrote a proper man page template from scratch and documented the new -l option. The new code is in the PR.

 

[cheesestraws]

Reviewed. Looks good to me . It's weird using the same UI for work stuff and hobby stuff, got to juggle two different vocabularies...

 

[mactjaap]

Super! Great solution.

For MacIPRPi I stick with two instances. So a user can make the choice.

 

[slipperygrey]

Super! Great solution.

For MacIPRPi I stick with two instances. So a user can make the choice.

Yeah, I agree that it is a great idea to give users this option. Something like this seems to do the trick:

$ ./timelord -l -n LOCALTIME $ ./timelord -n UTF

 

[NJRoadfan]

Turns out there is a later version of tardis (1.6) and Timelord (1.4) from 1993. Attached is the latest distro from down under. This one comes with color icons! Both are noted to be updated for System 7.x.

 

[cheesestraws]

Oh, that's cool, thankyou

 

[slipperygrey]

This is very neat! @NJRoadfan where did you find it?

I tested tardis 1.6 on my Power Mac running Mac OS 8.6, with our fixed Netatalk timelord daemon, and it seems to work perfectly fine. One new feature that I spotted is that you can schedule recurring time syncing while the Mac is running.

 

[NJRoadfan]

Believe it or not, a nearly 30 year old UseNet post announcing the release. The link given to the FTP server still worked!

 

[cheesestraws]

Believe it or not, a nearly 30 year old UseNet post announcing the release. The link given to the FTP server still worked!

That's a great find, well done.

Do you feel like uploading that to the Garden or shall I? (https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/tardis-and-timelord)

 

[NJRoadfan]

Go ahead. I don't hang around those places. Looks like a David Hornsby is the author.

Edit: Some digging found the distribution webpage with some other neat AppleTalk utilities: https://web.archive.org/web/20010309060235/http://www.cs.mu.OZ.AU/appletalk/atalk.html

 

[slipperygrey]

Wow, this is some top notch internet archeology going on here. That AppleTalk utilities page has a ton of neat goodies!

Unfortunately, the ftp server hasn't retained 100% of the software linked. I was curious about the motd (message of the day) daemon, but that's one of the files that's no longer there:

lftp munnari.oz.au:/mac> ls total 12826 -rw-r--r-- 1 200 0 174516 Oct 4 1996 arns.tar.Z drwxr-xr-x 2 200 0 512 Oct 18 2005 arns_arap drwxr-xr-x 2 200 0 512 Oct 18 2005 arns_mac drwxr-xr-x 2 200 0 512 Oct 18 2005 arns_ppp -rw-r--r-- 1 200 0 47925 Jan 31 1991 atalkad.1.25.shar.Z -rw-r--r-- 1 200 0 59967 Mar 9 1993 atalkad.2.1.shar.Z drwxr-xr-x 2 200 0 6656 Oct 17 2005 cap.patches -rw-r--r-- 1 200 0 800079 Oct 9 1991 cap50.tar.Z drwxr-xr-x 2 200 0 512 Oct 18 2005 cap60 -rw-r--r-- 1 200 0 1314774 Mar 8 1992 cap60.pl100.tar.Z -rw-r--r-- 1 200 0 1346001 Mar 15 1991 cap60.tar.Z -rw-r--r-- 1 200 0 4741 Oct 3 1994 dummy.adev.1.0.hqx -rw-r--r-- 1 200 0 15917 Apr 10 1996 dummy.adev.2.0.hqx -rw-r--r-- 1 200 0 99917 Jun 16 1998 iptalkadev.1.0.sit.hqx -rw-r--r-- 1 200 0 88591 Apr 11 1994 iptalkadev.1.0.sit.hqx.Z -rw-r--r-- 1 200 0 54757 Jun 16 1998 iptnnladev.1.0.sit.hqx -rw-r--r-- 1 200 0 49382 Mar 22 1995 iptnnladev.1.0.sit.hqx.Z drwxr-xr-x 2 200 0 512 Oct 18 2005 macdump -rw-r--r-- 1 200 0 596075 Feb 1 1997 macuar.1.1.sit.hqx -rw-r--r-- 1 200 0 679469 Mar 17 1998 macuar.1.2.sit.hqx -rw-r--r-- 1 200 0 679469 Mar 17 1998 macuar.sit.hqx -rw-r--r-- 1 200 0 38640 Feb 2 1993 timelord.1.4.shar.Z -rw-r--r-- 1 200 0 29862 Jun 16 1998 timelord.sit.hqx -rw-r--r-- 1 200 0 176975 Oct 30 1997 uar.tar.Z -rw-r--r-- 1 200 0 176781 Sep 25 1995 uar.tar.Z.old

Regardless, there are still a bunch of interesting stuff here to explore!

 

[NJRoadfan]

Buried in the cap60 directory as a shell archive. Here it is in zip format.