pfSense Timezone Confusion

[natbart]

I am in Americas/Winnipeg which is generally considered GMT -6.

I am confused by the choices in the time zone configuration. They seem to contradict normal time conventions. Why does it say Etc/GMT-X (X hours AHEAD of GMT)? When you are GMT -X, are you not actually X hours behind GMT?

I have switched to the setting that shows my actual city, just looking for some clarification.

Understood standard:

• Negative UTC offsets describe a time zone west of UTC±00:00, where the civil time is behind (or earlier) than UTC

• Positive UTC offsets describe a time zone east of UTC±00:00, where the civil time is ahead (or later) than UTC

[Felix 4]

@natbart

I was going to ask the same thing, I wonder too. I then first searched to see if a similar question had been asked, and there it was. However, there is no answer to it.

Does anyone now know, what is behind the reversed and illogical way it is written?
I use v. 22.05

[stephenw10]

Because POSIX style.

https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/troubleshooting/time-zone.html#clock-does-not-use-the-expected-zone-offset

Steve

[Felix 4]

@stephenw10

Thanks, it was good to get clarity as to why this is so, and that's OK.

;o)