>that tftpd daemon runs as chroot-ed process in default /tftproot dir so of
>course it couldn't access /etc/localtime to get the proper timezone
>information. Ok, i made a copy of localtime in tftpd's sandbox so it feels
>happy now.

A good solution is to modify syslog(3) to just send bare utc seconds
(suitably tagged) and have syslogd do the conversion to localtime.  

This involves a change to the protocol b/w syslog and syslogd, 
but provided you also handle the old format - and use that when 
sending off box it shouldn't do any harm.  Then you only have 
one process that you need to have call tzset when you HUP it for 
instance - to ensure that localtime changes are picked up globally.

--sjg