PHP script displaying wrong time
I include the following PHP code in web pages on this system to display the
last time that a file was updated.
<?php
$thisfile = pathinfo($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']);
echo "Last modified: ".date("l F j, Y g:i A",
filemtime($thisfile["basename"]));
?>
After I replaced the hard drive recently and installed
CentOS 7 as a fresh install, the times displayed have been ahead 5 hours, i.e.,
the PHP code was displaying a time stamp matching
Universal
Coordinated Time (UTC), also commonly referred to as
Greenwich Mean
Time, rather than
Eastern Standard Time (EST)
I verified the time zone was set correctly at the operating system level
with the timedatectl
command, so I realized the issue must be with PHP itself. I checked the
location of the PHP configuration file, php.ini and found it was
located at /etc/php.ini.
$ locate php.ini
/etc/php.ini
/usr/share/doc/php-common-5.4.16/php.ini-development
/usr/share/doc/php-common-5.4.16/php.ini-production
I logged into the root account and checked the contents of the
/etc/php.ini file. I found that the timezone was not
set in the file:
[Date]
; Defines the default timezone used by the date functions
; http://php.net/date.timezone
;date.timezone =
So I removed the semicolon which was making the date.timezone
line into a comment and set the time zone to be the appropriate one for
Eastern Time (ET).
[Date]
; Defines the default timezone used by the date functions
; http://php.net/date.timezone
date.timezone =America/New_York
I then restarted the Apache web server software with the
apachectl restart command, which fixed the problem.
[/languages/php]
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Setting the time zone on a CentOS 7 system
You can see the time zones a CentOS 7 system recognizes by entering the
command
timedatectl list-timezones while logged into the root
account.
[root@localhost ~]# timedatectl list-timezones
Africa/Abidjan
Africa/Accra
Africa/Addis_Ababa
Africa/Algiers
Africa/Asmara
Africa/Bamako
Africa/Bangui
Africa/Banjul
Africa/Bissau
Africa/Blantyre
Africa/Brazzaville
Africa/Bujumbura
Africa/Cairo
Africa/Casablanca
<text snipped>
Pacific/Pitcairn
Pacific/Pohnpei
Pacific/Port_Moresby
Pacific/Rarotonga
Pacific/Saipan
Pacific/Tahiti
Pacific/Tarawa
Pacific/Tongatapu
Pacific/Wake
Pacific/Wallis
For a system in the Americas, the following time zones are recognized:
[root@localhost ~]# timedatectl list-timezones | grep America
America/Adak
America/Anchorage
America/Anguilla
America/Antigua
America/Araguaina
America/Argentina/Buenos_Aires
America/Argentina/Catamarca
America/Argentina/Cordoba
America/Argentina/Jujuy
America/Argentina/La_Rioja
America/Argentina/Mendoza
America/Argentina/Rio_Gallegos
America/Argentina/Salta
America/Argentina/San_Juan
America/Argentina/San_Luis
America/Argentina/Tucuman
America/Argentina/Ushuaia
America/Aruba
America/Asuncion
America/Atikokan
America/Bahia
America/Bahia_Banderas
America/Barbados
America/Belem
America/Belize
America/Blanc-Sablon
America/Boa_Vista
America/Bogota
America/Boise
America/Cambridge_Bay
America/Campo_Grande
America/Cancun
America/Caracas
America/Cayenne
America/Cayman
America/Chicago
America/Chihuahua
America/Costa_Rica
America/Creston
America/Cuiaba
America/Curacao
America/Danmarkshavn
America/Dawson
America/Dawson_Creek
America/Denver
America/Detroit
America/Dominica
America/Edmonton
America/Eirunepe
America/El_Salvador
America/Fortaleza
America/Glace_Bay
America/Godthab
America/Goose_Bay
America/Grand_Turk
America/Grenada
America/Guadeloupe
America/Guatemala
America/Guayaquil
America/Guyana
America/Halifax
America/Havana
America/Hermosillo
America/Indiana/Indianapolis
America/Indiana/Knox
America/Indiana/Marengo
America/Indiana/Petersburg
America/Indiana/Tell_City
America/Indiana/Vevay
America/Indiana/Vincennes
America/Indiana/Winamac
America/Inuvik
America/Iqaluit
America/Jamaica
America/Juneau
America/Kentucky/Louisville
America/Kentucky/Monticello
America/Kralendijk
America/La_Paz
America/Lima
America/Los_Angeles
America/Lower_Princes
America/Maceio
America/Managua
America/Manaus
America/Marigot
America/Martinique
America/Matamoros
America/Mazatlan
America/Menominee
America/Merida
America/Metlakatla
America/Mexico_City
America/Miquelon
America/Moncton
America/Monterrey
America/Montevideo
America/Montserrat
America/Nassau
America/New_York
America/Nipigon
America/Nome
America/Noronha
America/North_Dakota/Beulah
America/North_Dakota/Center
America/North_Dakota/New_Salem
America/Ojinaga
America/Panama
America/Pangnirtung
America/Paramaribo
America/Phoenix
America/Port-au-Prince
America/Port_of_Spain
America/Porto_Velho
America/Puerto_Rico
America/Rainy_River
America/Rankin_Inlet
America/Recife
America/Regina
America/Resolute
America/Rio_Branco
America/Santa_Isabel
America/Santarem
America/Santiago
America/Santo_Domingo
America/Sao_Paulo
America/Scoresbysund
America/Sitka
America/St_Barthelemy
America/St_Johns
America/St_Kitts
America/St_Lucia
America/St_Thomas
America/St_Vincent
America/Swift_Current
America/Tegucigalpa
America/Thule
America/Thunder_Bay
America/Tijuana
America/Toronto
America/Tortola
America/Vancouver
America/Whitehorse
America/Winnipeg
America/Yakutat
America/Yellowknife
For a system on the east coast of the U.S., the appropriate time zone
would be "America/New_York". You can see the current timezone setting with the
command timedatectl with no parameters.
[root@localhost ~]# timedatectl
Local time: Tue 2014-12-30 00:15:02 EST
Universal time: Tue 2014-12-30 05:15:02 UTC
RTC time: Tue 2014-12-30 05:15:02
Timezone: America/New_York (EST, -0500)
NTP enabled: yes
NTP synchronized: yes
RTC in local TZ: no
DST active: no
Last DST change: DST ended at
Sun 2014-11-02 01:59:59 EDT
Sun 2014-11-02 01:00:00 EST
Next DST change: DST begins (the clock jumps one hour forward) at
Sun 2015-03-08 01:59:59 EST
Sun 2015-03-08 03:00:00 EDTIf you need to change the time zone, you can enter the command with
a set-timezone parameter, e.g.,
timedatectl set-timezone America/New_York.
You can use the ntpdate package to synchronize your
system with a
Network Time Protocol (NTP) server. You can check if the package is
installed with the command rpm -qi ntpdate. You will see
details on the package, if it is installed. If it is not installed, you
will see "package ntpdate is not installed".
References:
-
How To Configure Server Timezone In CentOS 7
By: Richard W
Date: September 14, 2014
Liberian Geek
[/os/unix/linux/centos]
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