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Wireshark-bugs: [Wireshark-bugs] [Bug 3384] UTC TIME for TIME protocol displayed as local time r

Date: Sun, 3 Jan 2010 02:36:51 -0800 (PST)
https://bugs.wireshark.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=3384

Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                 CC|                            |guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx
           Platform|Other                       |All
            Version|1.1.x (Experimental)        |SVN
         OS/Version|Windows Vista               |All
           Severity|Normal                      |Enhancement

--- Comment #3 from Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx> 2010-01-03 02:36:46 PST ---
There are a number of protocols where UTC goes over the wire - for example,
NFS, or any *other* protocol that sends UN*X times over the wire.

Unless a dissector takes special action, the times aren't displayed as UTC,
they're displayed as local time.

In the current code in the 1.3.x (current unstable/development) branch, the
"display" value for an FT_ABSOLUTE_TIME field can be either
ABSOLUTE_TIME_LOCAL, in which case the time value will be displayed as local
time, or ABSOLUTE_TIME_UTC, in which case the time value will be displayed as
UTC.

In addition, in that code, abs_time_to_str() and abs_time_secs_to_str() take an
additional argument - a Boolean specifying whether to show the time as local
time or UTC.  They also put a time zone indication into the string, so you know
whether it's local time or UTC (and, if it's local time, you see which zone
it's for).

Individual users might well prefer *different* display types.  If most or all
users would want UTC for a particular field, it might make sense to display it
as UTC.  I don't know whether, for example, users would want that for the UDP
time protocol.

It might also make sense to have a preference setting to, for example, force
all date/time values to be displayed as UTC, or perhaps also to force them to
be displayed as local time.

(Changing the version to SVN, as this has been true pretty much forever, and
the infrastructure to easily change it is only in the main branch.  Changing
the platform to All/All, as it's platform-independent; changing the type to
"Enhancement", because it's not necessarily objectively the case that
displaying a particular time value as local time is wrong - some might want it
that way.)

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