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Bug #22135 PHP confused by America/Los Angeles timezone
Submitted: 2003-02-09 00:56 UTC Modified: 2003-05-02 13:48 UTC
Votes:9
Avg. Score:2.2 ± 1.7
Reproduced:0 of 0 (0.0%)
From: vaughan at ucla dot edu Assigned:
Status: Closed Package: Date/time related
PHP Version: 4.2.3 OS: Linux (debian)
Private report: No CVE-ID: None
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 [2003-02-09 00:56 UTC] vaughan at ucla dot edu
<?
print("server timezone is: " . getenv('TZ') . "<br>\n");
 print("server time is: " . date("F j, Y, g:i a") . "<br>\n");
print("changing server time zone to US/Pacific....<br>\n");
putenv("TZ=US/Pacific");
 print("new server time is: " . date("F j, Y, g:i a") . "<br>\n");
print("new server timezone for this script is: " . getenv('TZ'));
?>

The above script gives the following output:

server timezone is: America/Los Angeles
server time is: February 9, 2003, 6:45 am
changing server time zone to US/Pacific....
new server time is: February 8, 2003, 10:45 pm
new server timezone for this script is: US/Pacific

the correct date and time in Los Angeles at the time of running the script is: February 8, 2003, 10:45 pm

The date command on the system gives the correct time and date.

/etc/timezone contains US/Pacific

setting environment variable TZ=US/Pacific before restarting apache has no effect on the above script. 

PHP configure line:

 './configure' '--with-mysql' '--with-apxs' '--with-config-file-path=/etc/php4/apache' '--enable-track-vars' '--enable-trans-sid' '--with-sybase=/usr/local/freetds' '--with-ldap' '--with-imap' '--with-curl=/usr' '--with-pgsql=/usr/include/postgresql' '--with-gd' '--with-xml' '--enable-cli'

Apache/1.3.26

Apache modules are: mod_php4, mod_ssl, mod_perl, mod_dav, mod_setenvif, mod_unique_id, mod_expires, mod_auth, mod_access, mod_rewrite, mod_alias, mod_userdir, mod_cgi, mod_dir, mod_autoindex, mod_status, mod_negotiation, mod_mime, mod_log_config, mod_macro, mod_so, http_core

This could be a problem with the underlying debian (2.2.19 kernel) system, but I thought I should report it.

Thank you.






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 [2003-02-09 07:49 UTC] michael dot mauch at gmx dot de
Using tzselect on Debian leads to the assumption that your TZ variable should probably be "America/Los_Angeles" (with underscore). Can you test that, please?
 [2003-02-09 10:54 UTC] vaughan at ucla dot edu
Yes, tzselect suggests that TZ be set as 'America/Los_Angeles'.

I did this, using export TZ='America/Los_Angeles' and restarted apache.  It made no difference to the php script output. 

In other words, if php believes that the server timezone is 'America/Los_Angeles' it gives the incorrect time.  But if it believes that timezone is 'US/Pacific' it gives the correct time.  However, setting TZ to 'US/Pacific' also makes no difference to the script output.  So I'm wondering where PHP is picking up the timezone information from and how I can get it to believe that the timezone is 'US/Pacific' from startup.  Can I set that in php.ini?

(Also, there are two timezone commands on debian, tzselect and tzconfig.  tzconfig lets one choose either 'US/Pacific' or 'America/Los_Angeles' for the timezone, but neither makes a difference to this script).
 [2003-02-09 12:39 UTC] michael dot mauch at gmx dot de
"apachectl restart" does not pick up the new TZ environment variable. Did you try apachectl stop / apachectl start? I get the same results as you with TZ="America/Los Angeles", but "America/Los_Angeles" or "US/Pacific" work. As far as I know there's no php.ini setting that fiddles with timezones.
 [2003-02-09 13:54 UTC] vaughan at ucla dot edu
here's what I do, as root:

# export TZ='America/Los_Angeles'
# set | grep TZ
# TZ=America/Los_Angeles
# apachectl stop
/usr/sbin/apachectl stop: httpd stopped
# apachectl start
/usr/sbin/apachectl start: httpd started


output of the php script: 

server timezone is: America/Los Angeles
server time is: February 9, 2003, 7:51 pm
changing server time zone to US/Pacific....
new server time is: February 9, 2003, 11:51 am
new server timezone for this script is: US/Pacific

I notice that PHP does not pick up the underscore in "Los_Angeles".

What I wondered was whether there's a way to do the equivalent of putenv("TZ=US/Pacific") in php.ini?

However, I have just noticed that the time is wrong in OTRS running on the same server -- and it is a set of perl scripts.  So maybe this is not a PHP bug at all?
 [2003-02-09 16:49 UTC] michael dot mauch at gmx dot de
You don't have a

  SetEnv TZ "America/Los Angeles"

in your httpd.conf, do you? Or maybe TZ is fixed in your apachectl script?
 [2003-02-22 11:37 UTC] vaughan at ucla dot edu
no, TZ is not being set in httpd.conf nor in apachectl.

Experiment #1
What happens if we use putenv("TZ=US/Los_Angeles")?

the script:

<?
print("server timezone is: " . getenv('TZ') . "<br>\n");
print("server time is: " . date("F j, Y, g:i a") . "<br>\n");
print("changing server time zone to US/Los_Angeles....<br>\n");
putenv("TZ=US/Los_Angeles");
 print("new server time is: " . date("F j, Y, g:i a") . "<br>\n");
print("new server timezone for this script is: " . getenv('TZ'));
?>

here's the output, with the incorrect times:

server timezone is: America/Los Angeles
server time is: February 22, 2003, 5:01 pm
changing server time zone to US/Los_Angeles....
new server time is: February 22, 2003, 5:01 pm
new server timezone for this script is: US/Los_Angeles
output of date(T):US/Los_Angeles


Experiment # 2:

I also tried putting 

SetEnv US/Pacific

into httpd.conf.

this script:

 print("server timezone is: " . getenv('TZ') . "<br>\n");
 print("server time is: " . date("F j, Y, g:i a") . "<br>\n");
print("changing server time zone to US/Pacific....<br>\n");
putenv("TZ=US/Pacific");
 print("new server time is: " . date("F j, Y, g:i a") . "<br>\n");
print("new server timezone for this script is: " . getenv('TZ'));

produces this output:

server timezone is: US/Pacific
server time is: February 22, 2003, 5:29 pm
changing server time zone to US/Pacific....
new server time is: February 22, 2003, 9:29 am
new server timezone for this script is: US/Pacific
output of date(T):PST

In this case, PHP picks up the US/Pacific timezone from the environment, but gets the time wrong!

Experiment # 3

try with SetEnv = US/Los_Angeles in httpd.conf

same script as #2, produces bad output:

server timezone is: US/Los_Angeles
server time is: February 22, 2003, 5:34 pm
changing server time zone to US/Pacific....
new server time is: February 22, 2003, 9:34 am
new server timezone for this script is: US/Los_Angeles
output of date(T):PST

So it seems to be the case that the ONLY way to get PHP to have the correct time is to use putenv("TZ=US/Pacific") in a script.

Any other ideas?  Thanks for your help
 [2003-02-22 13:37 UTC] michael dot mauch at gmx dot de
I don't see a /usr/share/zoneinfo/US/Los_Angeles on Debian, only
America/Los_Angeles (and US/Pacific). So I suggest you try again with America/Los_Angeles.
 [2003-02-24 10:38 UTC] vaughan at ucla dot edu
You're right. I should have used "America/Los_Angeles".

results: experiment #1, using
 putenv("TZ=America/Los_Angeles");

php produces the correct time after this, but not before (that is, doesn't pick up TZ from the system).

experiment # 3, SetEnv TZ=America/Los_Angeles in httpd.conf
has no effect -- the time is still wrong until I use putenv with either "US/Pacific" or "America/Los_Angeles".
 [2003-02-25 02:26 UTC] sniper@php.net
SetEnv in httpd.conf has no effect on PHP.
You should set the timezone correctly before you _start_
apache, in the shell..


 [2003-02-25 02:27 UTC] sniper@php.net
As your first script mentioned, the output for
getenv('TZ') was "America/Los Angeles" which is wrong..

 [2003-02-25 13:25 UTC] vaughan at ucla dot edu
sniper@php.net wrote:
<snip>
You should set the timezone correctly before you _start_
apache, in the shell..</snip>

I tried that..see my posting below from 9 Feb 1:54pm. Even when TZ is set correctly in the shell to 'America/Los_Angeles' before starting apache, php's getenv('TZ') reports "America/Los Angeles" as the timezone. If I set TZ to 'US/Pacific' in the shell, stop and start apache, php still reports the timezone incorrectly as "America/Los Angeles".  So, if PHP does not seem to be picking up the timezone from the environment.  Again, the only way I can affect the timezone is using putenv(). 

Not sure where to go from here.  Perhaps pull from CVS and recompile?
 [2003-05-02 13:48 UTC] vaughan at ucla dot edu
I rebuilt php a while after my Feb 25th posting, and the problem mysteriously went away. Since I run the testing dist of Debian and update with apt regularly (almost daily), there's a good chance that some other package got changed and that's what fixed the problem.
 
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