Date and Time

[susantjasinski]

Date and Time Settings - InVision Mockups for testing 11-2018

System Admins need to manually set the date and time of the BMC and Server, or select an NTP server to set it automatically.

ophosphor-time-manager is the time manager service that implements D-Bus interface xyz/openbmc_project/Time/EpochTime.interface.yaml. The user can get or set the BMC's or HOST's time via this interface.

• Manually radio button causes the Keep date and time radio buttons to display.
• Same for BMC and server radio button is the default selection for Manually radio button; only one set of fields displays; to be used for both the BMC and Server settings
• NTP server radio button: causes the Keep date and time radio buttons to hide; only one set of fields display to be used for both the BMC and Server settings, and they are not editable
• Date fields: combo-field allows the date to be typed or selected from a standard browser calendar picker; format must include "/" between numbers, but the order of Month, Day, Year will be determined by the locale in the browser
• Time fields: text field only
• TimeZone fields: displays the default browser timezone by default, and is not editable
• Add NTP Server button causes new NTP Server field and button sets to appear; more than one NTP server can be defined
• NTP Server field: the "Primary" NTP server defines the date/time for the BMC and server; if this server goes down then the date/time is based off the next server listed (priority order)
• Test button: tests the connection to the associated server
• Remove button: removes the associated server's field/button set from the panel, and causes the NTP server to be disconnected when the panel is saved

[gtmills]

https://github.com/openbmc/phosphor-time-manager

[joseph-reynolds]

Just curious, for the "Test" button: how is the connectivity test performed?

[joseph-reynolds]

The Time Zone field ("displays the default browser timezone by default, and is not editable") is mislabeled and is misleading. It should be labeled similar to: "your browser's time zone" and should not be on the same line as the BMC or Server's date+time.
Can the web page show the BMC's default time zone (date +%z or date +%Z)?

[vishwabmc]

@susantjasinski Thank you for putting together the explanation and the ux review.. I left some of my comments there.

At the outset, we have the concept of settings. https://github.com/openbmc/phosphor-time-manager/blob/master/README.md
I was going to ask how are these 2 mapped ?.

Test : What exactly is this doing ?. Is it attempting a time sync ?. Also, I could not see this in UX

Remove : I could not see this in the ux.

TimeZone: BMC always maintains time in UTC. So it may be confusing to have timezone here ?

[susantjasinski]

Notes left in the InVision mockups:

• How is the Data Last Refreshed content provided?
• Change panel title to "Set date and time manually or configure network time synchronization" to be more accurate (and therefore the NTP Server radio button label needs to be changed to "Network Time Synchronization ( NTP )"
• What will happen when "Different for BMC and Server" radio button is selected?. We have the concept of TimeOwners and are settable via settings mechanism. How is this tied to that?
• BMC is always UTC and does not take timezone into consideration. That being said, does this call for any interpretations?

[susantjasinski]

New Changes to the page layout coming in January based on feedback ...

[gtmills]

@susantjasinski The title "Set date and time dynamically by using Network Time Protocol (NTP) server or manually setting it. " needs an article before "Network Time Protocol (NTP) server". Overall I feel that title feels long and repeats "set".
What is wrong with the current title "Set date and time manually or configure a Network Time Protocol (NTP) Server" or something similar? Also no other page titles have a period.

[jandraa]

Current design proposals: https://ibm.invisionapp.com/share/RQNYHJ0VBDY#/318994111_1-_S_Empty

Need to confirm if the host needs to be off in order to synchronize with added NTP servers.