Re: Probable timezone problems: can anyone confirm and offer a solution?

[Ted Byers]

Rick James Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> > And my perl code takes the current timestamp,
> using the local timezone and converts it to UTC
> before trying to store it.
>
> Smells like a double conversion!
>
> The bits on disk that represent a TIMESTAMP
> datatype are UTC. But what you feed to a
> TIMESTAMP column (via INSERT) will be converted by
> MySQL on the fly, based on the timezone setting.
>
Damn! I am feeding UTC timestamps to mysql, and because mysql presently thnks the timezone is EST/EDT, it converts that to UTC (so the values end up being offset an additional 5 hours. Right? That would suggest that if I didn't provide a timestamp, and instead just used the function 'NOW()',

> Granted, if you tell MySQL that your "local time"
> is UTC _and_ my.ini says UTC, then that Perl code
> is the 'right' thing to do. (I suggest is it the
> 'wrong' way to get the right answer.)

I am guessing that you'd be recommending using NOW() instead of Perl, to handle the current timestamp, with it's timezone. And I suppose that would make it unnecessary to change the timezone that MySQL thinks applies. Right?

Thanks

Ted