How do I set the time zone of MySQL?

Question

On one server, when I run:

mysql> select now();
+---------------------+
| now()               |
+---------------------+
| 2009-05-30 16:54:29 |
+---------         


        

Answer 1

Keep in mind, that 'Country/Zone' is not working sometimes... This issue is not OS, MySQL version and hardware dependent - I've met it since FreeBSD 4 and Slackware Linux in year 2003 till today. MySQL from version 3 till latest source trunk. It is ODD, but it DOES happens. For example:

root@Ubuntu# ls -la /usr/share/zoneinfo/US
total 8

drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 4096 Apr 10  2013 .
drwxr-xr-x 22 root root 4096 Apr 10  2013 ..
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   18 Jul  8 22:33 Alaska -> ../SystemV/YST9YDT
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   21 Jul  8 22:33 Aleutian -> ../posix/America/Adak
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   15 Jul  8 22:33 Arizona -> ../SystemV/MST7
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   18 Jul  8 22:33 Central -> ../SystemV/CST6CDT
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   18 Jul  8 22:33 Eastern -> ../SystemV/EST5EDT
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   37 Jul  8 22:33 East-Indiana -> ../posix/America/Indiana/Indianapolis
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   19 Jul  8 22:33 Hawaii -> ../Pacific/Honolulu
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   24 Jul  8 22:33 Indiana-Starke -> ../posix/America/Knox_IN
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   24 Jul  8 22:33 Michigan -> ../posix/America/Detroit
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   18 Jul  8 22:33 Mountain -> ../SystemV/MST7MDT
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   18 Jul  8 22:33 Pacific -> ../SystemV/PST8PDT
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   18 Jul  8 22:33 Pacific-New -> ../SystemV/PST8PDT
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   20 Jul  8 22:33 Samoa -> ../Pacific/Pago_Pago
root@Ubuntu#

And a statement like that is supposed to work:

SET time_zone='US/Eastern';

But you have this problem:

Error Code: 1298. Unknown or incorrect time zone: 'EUS/Eastern'

Take a look at the subfolder in your zone information directory, and see the ACTUAL filename for symlink, in this case it's EST5EDT. Then try this statement instead:

SET time_zone='EST5EDT';

And it's actually working as it is supposed to! :) Keep this trick in mind; I haven't seen it to be documented in MySQL manuals and official documentation. But reading the corresponding documentation is must-do thing: MySQL 5.5 timezone official documentation - and don't forget to load timezone data into your server just like that (run as root user!):

mysql_tzinfo_to_sql /usr/share/zoneinfo | mysql -u root mysql

Trick number one - it must be done exactly under MySQL root user. It can fail or produce non-working result even from the user that has full access to a MySQL database - I saw the glitch myself.