Timezone problem in Fedora Linux

[Knute Johnson]

I'm having a problem with the time in Java. I running Fedora 7 and
Sun's JDK 1.6.0_01. The time is one hour early and the timezone shows
GMT-0800 when it should be -0700. Any ideas?

[root@localhost tzupdater-1.2.1-2007f]# cat test.java
import java.util.*;

public class test {
public static void main(String[] args) {
System.out.println(new Date());
}
}

[root@localhost tzupdater-1.2.1-2007f]# java test
Tue Jun 05 21:26:02 GMT-08:00 2007

Thanks,

knute...

 

[Gordon Beaton]

I'm having a problem with the time in Java. I running Fedora 7 and
Sun's JDK 1.6.0_01. The time is one hour early and the timezone
shows GMT-0800 when it should be -0700. Any ideas?

What does /etc/sysconfig/clock contain?
What does the "date" command show?
What about "echo $TZ"?

Try updating /etc/localtime, it should be a copy of one of the files
in /usr/share/zoneinfo.

/gordon

--

 

[Knute Johnson]

What does /etc/sysconfig/clock contain?
What does the "date" command show?
What about "echo $TZ"?

Try updating /etc/localtime, it should be a copy of one of the files
in /usr/share/zoneinfo.

/gordon

Gordon:

Thanks for the reply. $TZ is not set currently but I did try setting it
to US/Pacific. This fixes the problem only for programs run in the
terminal. Applets still show the wrong time. I don't know where the
time zone would be set for an applet but I would have thought that it
came from the system time zone. How is the time zone propagated in Linux?

Below are the answers to your questions. The correct time was 16:??
hours. I tried setting /etc/localtime to /usr/share/zoneinfo/PST8PDT
and /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Los_Angeles. Neither make a difference.

[knute@localhost ~]$ cat /etc/sysconfig/clock
# The ZONE parameter is only evaluated by system-config-date.
# The timezone of the system is defined by the contents of /etc/localtime.
ZONE="America/Los Angeles"
UTC=false
ARC=false
[knute@localhost ~]$ date
Thu Jun 7 16:04:43 PDT 2007
[knute@localhost ~]$ echo $TZ

[knute@localhost ~]$ cat test.java
import java.util.*;

public class test {
public static void main(String[] args) {
System.out.println(new Date());
System.out.println(TimeZone.getDefault().getID());
}
}
[knute@localhost ~]$ java test
Thu Jun 07 15:05:04 GMT-08:00 2007
GMT-08:00
[knute@localhost ~]$

Also if I set the timezone on the command line -

[knute@localhost ~]$ java -Duser.timezone=US/Pacific test
Thu Jun 07 16:11:26 PDT 2007
US/Pacific
[knute@localhost ~]$

it gives the correct time and zone.

Thanks very much,

knute
email s/knute/nospam/

 

[Gordon Beaton]

Thanks for the reply. $TZ is not set currently but I did try setting it
to US/Pacific. This fixes the problem only for programs run in the
terminal. Applets still show the wrong time. I don't know where the
time zone would be set for an applet but I would have thought that it
came from the system time zone. How is the time zone propagated in Linux?

If TZ is set, then that timezone is used. If you set (and export) TZ
high up in the process hierarchy (e.g. /etc/profile), then all of your
processes will see it. For processes without TZ, the timezone defined
by /etc/localtime is used.

I would expect the timezone seen by the browser, and hence the applet,
to follow the same rules.

Below are the answers to your questions. The correct time was 16:??
hours. I tried setting /etc/localtime to /usr/share/zoneinfo/PST8PDT
and /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Los_Angeles. Neither make a difference.

I'd also recommend setting UTC=true in /etc/sysconfig/clock unless
this is a dual boot Linux-Windows machine. (UTC=false is a concession
to Windows, which insists on storing localtime in the HW clock).

This might offer more insight:
http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6456628

/gordon

--

 

[Roedy Green]

I'm having a problem with the time in Java. I running Fedora 7 and
Sun's JDK 1.6.0_01. The time is one hour early and the timezone shows
GMT-0800 when it should be -0700. Any ideas?

see http://mindprod.com/jgloss/timezone.html

Make sure your OS timezone and time are properly configured. Also turn
on DST.

 

[Roedy Green]

I would expect the timezone seen by the browser, and hence the applet,
to follow the same rules.

Perhaps the browser has its own TZ setting. Use Wassup to see what
system properties the browser is using.

see http://mindprod.com/applets/wassup.html

 

[Knute Johnson]

Perhaps the browser has its own TZ setting. Use Wassup to see what
system properties the browser is using.

see http://mindprod.com/applets/wassup.html
--

The problem is the bug that Gordon identified. I don't think it is
going to get fixed because there are only two votes for the bug.


knute...

 

[kyleki]

[knute@localhost ~]$ cat /etc/sysconfig/clock
# The ZONE parameter is only evaluated by system-config-date.
# The timezone of the system is defined by the contents of /etc/localtime.
ZONE="America/Los Angeles"
UTC=false
ARC=false

On my machine, I found that putting an underscore in the ZONE entry
fixed the problem:
ZONE="America/Los_Angeles"

Is this a bug with the program that writes out /etc/sysconfig/clock or
with the way java parses it?

 

[Roedy Green]

On my machine, I found that putting an underscore in the ZONE entry
fixed the problem:
ZONE="America/Los_Angeles"

see http://mindprod.com/jgloss/timezone.html for the official list of
Timezone names. They never contain spaces. They always have
underscores. I don't know though about names for DateFormat.parse.

 

[Knute Johnson]

[knute@localhost ~]$ cat /etc/sysconfig/clock
# The ZONE parameter is only evaluated by system-config-date.
# The timezone of the system is defined by the contents of /etc/localtime.
ZONE="America/Los Angeles"
UTC=false
ARC=false

On my machine, I found that putting an underscore in the ZONE entry
fixed the problem:
ZONE="America/Los_Angeles"

That solved my problem too. In fact I don't need the "s any more.

Is this a bug with the program that writes out /etc/sysconfig/clock or
with the way java parses it?

Different Linux use different methods for keeping track of the timezone.
I don't know for sure how Java determines the current timezone but in
Fedora 7 it seems to read the /etc/sysconfig/clock file. That file
doesn't exist in other Linux versions.

There is a Java bug on this subject, 6456628.