[gentoo-user] odd issue with RTKIT syslog-ng

[Jack <ostroffjh@users.sourceforge.net>]

As usual, I've got what seems to be a really obscure problem, and I  
have not found any reference to it searching the interwebs.

The suspect package is sys-auth/rtkit-0/13-r1 (which has nothing to do  
with chkrootkit) and I'm using app-admin/syslog-ng-3.26.1-r1.

As a typical example from /var/log/messages (extract, and having  
reconfigured syslog-ng to us iso timestamps)

2020-11-15T18:30:01-05:00 localhost CROND[7320]: (root) CMD  
(/usr/lib/sa/sa1 1 1)
2020-11-15T23:34:10-05:00 localhost rtkit-daemon[6263]: Supervising 0  
threads of 0 processes of 0 users.
2020-11-15T23:36:38-05:00 localhost rtkit-daemon[6263]: Supervising 0  
threads of 0 processes of 0 users.
2020-11-15T18:40:01-05:00 localhost CROND[15943]: (root) CMD (test -x  
/usr/sbin/run-crons && /usr/sbin/run-crons)

All rtkit messages to syslog seem to be in UTC, or at least five hours  
off from my local Americas/New York timezone.  rtkit uses the syslog()  
call for all logging, and there is nothing in those calls that even  
mentions timezone.

However, in digging further, I found two log entries from rtkit which  
do appear to be using local time.  In looking at the rtkit source,  
those two use the LOG_INFO and LOG_NOTICE as their levels.  All other  
logging in rtkit uses LOG_ERR, LOG_DEBUG, or LOG_WARNING, with one  
exception:  I see one LOG_INFO message (repeated, scattered across the  
log) which does show the UTC time.

So, does anyone have an idea what is going on?

I have one theory so far, but I a bit stuck on how to test it.  I'm not  
sure where in the boot process rtkit gets started, but I think it's  
automatically started when Dbus starts.  As part of the daemon's  
startup routine, it drops some privileges.  Is it possible that the  
applicable timezone gets changed when it drops privileges?  As far as I  
can tell, the log messages with the correct time are all produced  
before it drops privs.  Am I barking up the right tree, or am I barking  
mad?

Thanks for any thoughts.

Jack