fix: correct Rockbox's local wall-clock timestamps to UTC
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Rockbox has no concept of a timezone. Its clock holds local time, and it
builds log timestamps with mktime(get_time()) -- but firmware/libc/mktime.c
is plain calendar arithmetic applying no offset, so the RTC's local fields
come out as though they were UTC. The number in the log is ahead of the real
instant by whatever the offset was, and Last.fm stores UTC, so every play
submitted during BST landed an hour in the future.

Rockbox states this itself: its scrobbler plugin writes #TZ/UNKNOWN, and the
AUDIOSCROBBLER spec allows #TZ/UTC only for a device that actually converted.
The correction belongs to the consumer.

Each timestamp is decoded back to its wall-clock fields and reinterpreted in
the player's zone, per play rather than as one offset over the whole log, so
a log spanning a daylight saving change converts each side correctly. A log
declaring #TZ/UTC is left alone rather than shifted twice.

The zone defaults to this machine's, overridable with --device-timezone or
ROCKBOX_TIMEZONE. Deriving it needs the whole IANA name: /etc/localtime
resolves into the tzdata tree, and taking only the final component yields
"London", which no database holds, silently falling back to a fixed offset
that is wrong for half the year.

Since Rockbox cannot adjust for daylight saving on its own, the player's
clock has to be changed by hand twice a year. Any play converting to a future
time is now reported, which is what a forgotten adjustment looks like.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
Emma Thorpe
2026-08-27 15:32:54 +01:00
co-authored by Claude Opus 5
parent 8d6885c46a
commit c12d2328e5
4 changed files with 332 additions and 7 deletions
+41
View File
@@ -309,6 +309,47 @@ real-time clock Rockbox writes `/.scrobbler-timeless.log` with every timestamp
set to zero; those are counted and reported but never submitted, because
scrobbling them would mean inventing when they happened.
### Timestamps are local wall clock, and are corrected here
Rockbox has no concept of a timezone. Its clock is set to local time, and it
builds log timestamps with `mktime(get_time())` — but
[its `mktime`](https://git.rockbox.org/cgit/rockbox.git/tree/firmware/libc/mktime.c)
is plain calendar arithmetic that applies no offset, so the RTC's local fields
come out as if they were UTC. The number in the log is therefore ahead of the
real instant by whatever the offset was. Last.fm stores UTC, so submitting it
raw puts every play an hour into the future for the half of the year the UK is
on BST.
Rockbox is candid about this: its scrobbler plugin writes `#TZ/UNKNOWN` in the
log header, and the AUDIOSCROBBLER spec says a device may claim `#TZ/UTC` only
if it actually converted. The correction is the consumer's job.
Each timestamp is decoded back into the wall-clock fields it came from and
reinterpreted in the player's zone. Doing it **per play** rather than applying
one offset to the whole log matters: a week's listening can straddle a daylight
saving change, and the two sides need different offsets. A log that declares
`#TZ/UTC` is left alone, so a client that already converted is not shifted
twice.
The zone defaults to this machine's. Set `ROCKBOX_TIMEZONE` (or pass
`--device-timezone`) to an IANA name if the player's clock is keeping a
different one.
Because Rockbox cannot adjust for daylight saving itself, **you have to change
the player's clock by hand twice a year**. If you forget, its times are an hour
out and no amount of zone arithmetic recovers them. The submitter reports any
play that converts to a time in the future, which is what a forgotten
adjustment looks like:
```
37 plays are timestamped up to 58 minutes in the future, converting from
Europe/London. Either the player's clock is wrong or that is not the zone
it is set to.
```
`--dry-run` prints each play's local time beside the epoch, so the conversion
can be checked against when you actually remember listening.
### Nothing played is thrown away
Two separate obligations, because a play that happened and never reached