====== Time Zones ======

<note important>We recommend that you leave your server in GMT so that you won't have to worry about daylight savings issues.  However for a specific user you are able to set their timezone to the locale</note>

When you get one of our Accelerators you'll notice that the time is in GMT:

<code shell>$ date
Thu Nov 16 22:24:27 GMT 2006</code>
That can be really //really// annoying.  I don't know about you but I just can't think in GMT.  But the solution is simple.  Simply set the TZ variable in your profile (**.bash_profile**, **.bashrc**, **.profile**, depending on what shell you prefer):

<code shell>$ date
Thu Nov 16 22:26:39 GMT 2006
$ export TZ="PST8DST"
$ date
Thu Nov 16 14:26:50 PST 2006</code>
The use of this variable is really handy, especially if you've got one developer in Europe, another in California, and another in New York.

Alternatively, if you want to simply change the default timezone for your entire container, edit **/etc/TIMEZONE** and change the TZ variable there.

You can find a complete list of all the timezones supported by Solaris (which is a lot!) in **/usr/share/lib/zoneinfo**.  You specify the file path relative to that directory, so if you want Hong Kong you'd use "Asia/Hong_Kong", if you wanted EST you'd use "EST".

<code shell>$ export TZ="Asia/Hong_Kong"
$ date
Fri Nov 17 06:33:57 HKT 2006</code>