timezone

[Tom Fellowes]

In /etc/TIMEZONE, I have TZ set to GMT0. One of our developers says that some of his code is setting the time off by 5 hours and he thinks it's because the file /etc/default/tz contains one line:
EST5EDT

I've never heard of the /etc/default/tz file. Can anyone tell me what this file is for?

TIA

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi Tom,

/etc/TIMEZONE will set the default TZ initially, but *can* be overriden by any subsequent export of TZ. Remember the time in the system is constant, only how it's displayed can be manipulated. So have the developer check any .profile settings & any/all scripts run prior to starting the SW. I suspect you'll see where they're setting a new TZ value.

Rgds,
Jeff

[John Carr_2]

Hi

have you tried

echo $TZ

to check that it is in fact not the default timezone.

John.

[Fabio Ettore]

Hi,

what is the O.S. version? 11.11 or 11.00?

Anyway it is the default TIMEZONE of system.
For better comprehension: under /etc/default there is fs too.
Then when you will use

# newfs /dev/vg00/rlvol10

without specify -F system will take up vxfs because /etc/default/fs contains
LOCAL=vxfs.

The same should be for timezone; if you doesn't specify timezone /etc/default/tz should be taken.

Another problem I heard about libc. From libc patch text:

When environment variable TZ is not set, the variables
tzname[2] and timezone is set to hard coded values
corresponding to Eastern Standard Time.

Please past output of
# swlist -l product |grep -i libc

HTH.

Best regards,
Ettore

[Tom Fellowes]

THanks for the help, but it ended up being bad code. The developer checked and his code was using tzset and he said he'd change it to use locatime or ctime or something like that. I should've posted this in a programming area anyway. Sorry.

[Manish Srivastava · Accepted solution]

Hi,

The /etc/default/tz has the setting which the date and time related commands use if the TZ enviorn variable is not set. If you export the TZ in your enviorn then it overrides the default setting. Have a look at man tztab, tzset and enviorn.

Regards,
Manish.