Issue
I am running Jenkins on a Linux server and shows the wrong time :(
Situation: I am running another java app (in tomcat that also runs Jenkins) that shows the correct time in the log files (I use Logback through slf4j). The bios is set to the UTC time (system clock) like advises here: http://www.linuxsa.org.au/tips/time.html
In Linux it's indicated in /etc/sysconfig/clock that the system clock is set to UTC and in which timezone we are located. I am in UTC+1
Running date command on Linux shows the correct local time. Example: Sun Jan 8 12:11:35 CET 2012 But Jenkins shows the time plus 1 hour :(...
The jenkins config shows: user.timezone = Europe/Amsterdam (which is UTC+1).
I think that Jenkins (java) thinks the local clock is set to UTC such that 1 hour is added.
How do I solve this?
Solution
See here: https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Change+time+zone
In short, you can set the system property, either modifying the JVM options,
java -Dorg.apache.commons.jelly.tags.fmt.timeZone=TZ ...
Or changing Jenkins configuration in /etc/default/jenkins (Debian) or /etc/sysconfig/jenkins (Red Hat):
JAVA_ARGS="-Dorg.apache.commons.jelly.tags.fmt.timeZone=America/New_York"
It also mentioned -Duser.timezone="..." is an option, but can cause problems / interfere with other contexts (some vague hand-waving & caveats: time travel is always unpredictable).
In general (in my experience), don't change the system time, since us, our servers & our data live in a global world & should be handling, sending, comparing all times in UTC until the latest possible moment: usually that's the GUI (presentation layer) just before being displayed (...if even then). (Our build system results actually produces data that is fed into another system in another time zone.)
Answered By - michael
Answer Checked By - Marie Seifert (JavaFixing Admin)
