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How to Set the TimeZone in Solaris 10,11

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In Solaris Operating System (OS), where is the default timezone set, and how can it be changed?

Solaris 11 OS and above

1. The default timezone is defined as a property of the “svc:/system/timezone:default” SMF service:

# svcs timezone
STATE          STIME    FMRI
online         Aug_22   svc:/system/timezone:default
# svcprop timezone:default |grep localtime
timezone/localtime astring US/Eastern

2. To change the default timezone, use the svccfg and then refresh the service with the svcadm command. For example:

# svccfg -s timezone:default setprop timezone/localtime = astring: US/Mountain
# svcadm refresh timezone:default

3. Alternatively, the default timezone can be changed with the zic command. This is a reasonable way to change the timezone; it will fail immediately when you try to change the timezone using a wrong value. If you use svccfg and may make an spelling error then you might not realize it and the command would still work. Example to modify timezone via zic:

# /usr/sbin/zic -l US/Mountain

4. Another way to modify the default timezone is to use “nlsadm set-timezone”. Example:

// ensure the package nls-administration is installed
# pkg list nls-administration
NAME (PUBLISHER) VERSION IFO
system/locale/nls-administration 0.5.11-0.175.3.0.0.26.2 i--
// get the currently selected default timezone
# nlsadm get-timezone
timezone=Europe/London
// select the default timezone
# nlsadm set-timezone US/Eastern
Setting SMF property timezone/localtime with value: 'US/Eastern' ...
Successfully set
// confirmation
# nlsadm get-timezone
timezone=US/Eastern

# date
Wed Jul 20 16:58:42 EDT 2016

Solaris 10 OS and below

1. The default timezone is set in the /etc/TIMEZONE configuration file (symbolically linked to /etc/default/init).

# cat /etc/default/init
#
# Copyright 1992, 1999-2002 Sun Microsystems, Inc.  All rights reserved.
# Use is subject to license terms.
#
#ident  "@(#)init.dfl   1.7     02/12/03 SMI"
#
# This file is /etc/default/init.  /etc/TIMEZONE is a symlink to this file.
# This file looks like a shell script, but it is not.  To maintain
# compatibility with old versions of /etc/TIMEZONE, some shell constructs
# (i.e., export commands) are allowed in this file, but are ignored.
#
# Lines of this file should be of the form VAR=value, where VAR is one of
# TZ, LANG, CMASK, or any of the LC_* environment variables.  value may
# be enclosed in double quotes (") or single quotes (').
#
TZ=US/Mountain
...

2. To change the system timezone, edit the /etc/TIMEZONE file and change the value of the TZ variable. For Example:

TZ=US/Eastern

3. You must reboot the system for timezone changes to take effect.

NOTE: The tzreload command, which is available in Solaris 10 Update 9 (and above), doesn’t eliminate the need to reboot when the TZ variable is modified.

A list of valid timezone/localtime values can be found in the /usr/share/lib/zoneinfo directory

For e.g. ‘Europe/Berlin’ in directory /usr/share/lib/zoneinfo

# ls -1d /usr/share/lib/zoneinfo/Europe/[A-Z]*
Europe/Amsterdam
Europe/Andorra
Europe/Athens
-- lines omitted --
Europe/Zaporozhye
Europe/Zurich
# ls -1d /usr/share/lib/zoneinfo/US/[A-Z]*
US/Alaska
US/Aleutian
US/Arizona
US/Central
-- lines omitted --
US/Mountain
US/Pacific
US/Pacific-New
US/Samoa

Similarly for other continents/countries:

Africa/
America/
Asia/
-- lines omitted --

Example to set/change the timezone (TZ) only for one particular command

The below commands sets the TZ=Europe/London only for one particular command

# TZ=Europe/London date
Wed Jul 20 22:31:17 BST 2016
# TZ="US/Central" date
Wed Jul 20 16:35:33 CDT 2016
# TZ="US/Central" date '+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'
2016-07-20 16:35:35

Set timezone (TZ) variable per User

The TZ variable can be set per User in .profile or .login. For e.g.

# vi ~/.profile
TZ=Europe/London

Set timezone (TZ) variable per non-global-zone (NGZ)

Ever since Zones was introduced way back in Solaris 10, there has been a demand for the ability for Zones to set its own time. The default TIMEZONE in a native non-global zone can be selected the same way as for a global zone.

Additional info to set/adjust the (hardware) clock on Solaris system

Check the current date/time on system using UTC clock info

# date -u
Wed Jul 20 21:54:52 GMT 2016

Example Setting Another Time and Date in Greenwich Mean Time

The following command sets the date to Thu Jul 21 10:15:00 GMT 2016

# date -u 072110152016
Thu Jul 21 10:15:00 GMT 2016
# date    
Thu Jul 21 11:16:46 BST 2016
# date -u
Thu Jul 21 10:16:54 GMT 2016

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