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I am European

export BOOTSTRAP_TIMEZONE="UTC +2"

I can not check, something is wrong with Github right now. If that is not right what should I change?

Marcus Müller
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Richard Rublev
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    there's nothing wrong with github right now for me, so hopefully that will be transient. Anyways, nope, that's not a time zone, but an offset. What is the actual timezone you want to be in? "Europe" spans from the spanish time zone to the moscow time zone, at the very least. My guess is you want to actually say "I'm on central european time, including daylight savings time". Then, the clock will still be right in fall, when we turn back our wall clocks. – Marcus Müller Apr 18 '23 at 09:24
  • Berlin time zone UTC +2 – Richard Rublev Apr 18 '23 at 09:28
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    You would want to use `tzselect` on any machine to figure out the correct time zone string for you. **But**, what I'd consider a fair warning: Honestly, don't use anything but `"UTC"` on a server machine, *especially* not if its responsible for spawning containers of all purposes. You can still set a timezone for any service within if you need that for some reason, but localizing the orchestrator's time zone sounds more trouble than it's worth! See [this](https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/741976/should-i-still-use-utc-for-all-my-servers/741978#741978) question for discussions on that. – Marcus Müller Apr 18 '23 at 09:29
  • @MarcusMüller TZ='Europe/Belgrade',tzselect choose that way. – Richard Rublev Apr 18 '23 at 09:30
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    @RichardRublev just to repeat that: "Berlin time zone" is *not* the same as "UTC +2". It *currently* has that value, for a few more months. Berlin time zone is, as guessed above, central european time zone with daylight savings incorporated. Don't confuse UTC offsets with time zones – simply different things. – Marcus Müller Apr 18 '23 at 09:31
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    @RichardRublev great! Sounds like `tzselect` answered your question. You might want to post an answer that explains what you did for posteriority, so you can close this question (and also, get some points, as a side bonus). I still maintain, *not* using a timezone but UTC is probably the right choice, but you do you. – Marcus Müller Apr 18 '23 at 09:32

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It's quite common for servers to be set to UTC in Europe. But not wholly ubiquitous. Only you can decide if using something other than UTC is a good idea.

Timezones are a rabbit hole of utter madness where the more you know the more you realise you have to learn.

Unless you have a very specific reason why you know you MUST set your timezone to a fixed UTC offset you should always use timezones from the IANA timezone database.

You can commonly lookup the named timezones from wikipedia here or use tzselect. In the case of "Berlin" the timezone you are looking for is: Europe/Berlin.

Unlike almost every other solution, the IANA database is kept up to date with political changes etc. It's indexed by geographic location [by city] which works for almost everywhere in the world. There are always exceptions.

So if the local government in Berlin decide to change timezone (yes this type of thing happens) then a software patch will most likely fix the difference.

As long as you keep your software up to date and as long as the local legislature gives enough warning, this should mean your server is always in the right time zone.

Philip Couling
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  • Very nice answer that also explains the difference between a proper timezone and an UTC offset. +1, well earned. Regarding "yes, timezones change": The European Council is currently asking the Commission to explain how they'd propose to actually go through with abandoning the daylights saving time. Much less organized, much more drastic: Lebanon recently (March 28 2023) suddenly (as in: the week before) decided to postpone daylight savings time till after Ramadan, then different branches of the government went and simply declared their own time zones in agreement and disagreement with that. – Marcus Müller Apr 18 '23 at 09:56
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    @MarcusMüller Yes. The more you read the exceptions the more scary it gets. I don't want to misquote the location but I know that for some years there's one city with two cultures that can't agree. I believe IANA tries to track the timezone people actually observe even when a locality "goes rogue". In the previous case IANA could get away with saying some people observed the next city over, and not offend anyone in the process. I don't believe they've been able to pull the same trick with Lebanon. – Philip Couling Apr 18 '23 at 10:05