Please check the 2 linux commands: date -d "$(date +%F\ %H:%M:%S)" +%F\ %H:%M:%S date -d "$(date +%F\ %H:%M:%S) + 1 minute" +%F\ %H:%M:%S It's very confusing, because the results of the two commands differ in one hour and one minute, except of one minute only. [~]$ date -d "$(date +%F\ %H:%M)" +%F\ %H:%M:%S 2012-03-28 14:06:00 ... and after a few seconds: [~]$ date -d "$(date +%F\ %H:%M:%S) + 1 minute" +%F\ %H:%M:%S 2012-03-28 15:07:20 It's a bug or I don't understand something? The systems tested include: Fedora 16 Centos 6.2 Debian *6.0.4 *Best Regards, Stefan Karamuz