Timestamps in a report log are determined by the clock on the license server machine. The times are converted from the time zone of the license server machine and stored in the report log in Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), also known as Universal Time (UTC). Therefore, the data in a report log is insensitive to time zones, and you can run a report using report logs that were written on machines in different time zones without compensating for time differences. Reports, on the other hand, show time using the time zone set on the machine where the report was generated. SAMreport-Lite translates times in UTC from the report log using the offset for the time zone of the machine on which SAMreport-Lite is running.
For example, if you have an event in a report log that was written at 1pm by a vendor daemon running on a license server in the US Eastern time zone, its timestamp in the report log would be written as 6pm GMT. If an event in a report log was written at 10am by a vendor daemon running on a license server in the US Pacific time zone, its timestamp would also be written as 6pm GMT. If those two report logs were used to generate a report in the US Pacific time zone, those two events would both be reported at 10am. If the same report were generated on a computer in the US Eastern time zone, the events would both be reported at 1pm.
Possible causes for the times in reports that are different than you expect are:
- The time zone on the license server machine is set incorrectly. If the time zone is not set correctly, and the system clock has been set to show local time, an error is introduced into the UTC timestamps recorded in the report log.
- The time zone on the machine where SAMreport-Lite is running is set incorrectly. Even if the clock time looks correct, the time zone may not be set correctly.