Message-ID: <4EBA9C3D.9030701@pinpointresearch.com>
Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2011 07:29:01 -0800
From: Steve Crawford <scrawford@pinpointresearch.com>
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To: Geoffrey Myers <lists@serioustechnology.com>
CC: pgsql-admin@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: setting timezone
References: <4EBA7BCC.2030704@serioustechnology.com>
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On 11/09/2011 05:10 AM, Geoffrey Myers wrote:
> We are moving a number of databases to new hardware.  Some of these 
> machines have the timezone set in the database differently then the 
> actual location of the machine as they are access from a different 
> timezone.  We were surprised to note that when we dump the database 
> and reloaded it on the new machine, it did not retain the timezone 
> setting.
>
> Is there a way to retain this information from the original database 
> when reloading?
>
> Thanks.
>

Time-zone setting is an attribute of the server configuration, not of 
the data contained in the database. Unless overidden by the timezone 
setting in postgresql.conf, PostgreSQL will use the server's time zone 
environment setting. You can specify a default time-zone for PostgreSQL 
independent of the server's environment by setting "timezone" explicitly 
in postgresql.conf.

Clients can override the default server setting with "SET TIMEZONE TO 
...;" which is useful when a single server is supporting users across 
many time zones.

Cheers,
Steve