The Ask
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.
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