Setting date and time

I'm having this exact problem. I can't find the post you are referring to--Apr.29, 8:07 pm "system timezone is GMT only". I gathered from your response that it involved creating a new user.

I created a new user and I was able to set my time zone correctly. However, when I logged back in using my normal account and selected any time zone in the date/time preference pane, it immediately jumped back to GMT. It does this for all accounts on the computer.

I have tried everything to fix this--trashed prefs, trashed caches, repaired permissions, optimized system, etc., etc. Why does it keep reverting to GMT and not allow me to change the time zone?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Hey,

Same problem here. I too cannot find the discussion mentioned in your reply. Do you have any more details. I'm assuming that the old users info will have to be copied to the new user, but when I copy I would replace all of the new files in the Library with my existing one. Is there a particular file that is causing the issue, and/or any reason why this is happening??

Any additional info would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Michael

Things I have tried:
1. Thinking it may be some user settings I have created a new admin user and tried
to set the time zone, same problem occurs.
2. I also ran Repair Disk Permissions in Disk Utility to eliminate the possibility of the file that stores this info may be out of date.
3. I also tried removing com.apple.MenuBarClock.plist which had no effect either.

Does anyone have any idea why this is happening. I believe usually the clock in the menu bar is updated immediately when the time zone is changed. So it seems to be deeper in the system where the time zone is stuck.

Thanks,
Michael

I've tried the same things and had no luck. In addition, I set the time zone, and locked the system preference. When I checked the preference again, it was reset to GMT again.

I noticed this came about right after I tried to change my closest city (I had Philadelphia and changed it to Washington DC (a little closer to Pittsburgh)

Hi,

I have the exact same problem. I set the time zone to New York and it revert systematically to GMT. I tried everything I can and know but nothing works

Just responding to make this topic active again and say that I still have no way of setting the time zone to something other than GMT. I will try a system install soon and hope that it will work.

If anyone has figured out a work-a-round please post it.

Michael

I am also having the exact same problem. If I set the timezone to PST, it quickly forgets and goes back to GMT, and the clock in the menu bar never sets properly. Someone please post a fix.

I'm also having the same problem. The timezone was successfully set for about a week at PDT. I changed the timezone to KST and it worked fine for about 2 months. When I tried changing the timezone to London time, I began getting GMT. Now, if I try to change the timezone, it keeps reverting to GMT.

The only other changes I've made to the system that I can think of are following this security guide (pdf) http://packetstormsecurity.nl/mac-osx/050819-securing-mac-os-x-tiger.pdf

If I open the terminal app and type "date" on the command line, it shows the correct time and timezone. All of the GUI applications are displaying the time in GMT though.

I'm kind of new to OS X, but on Linux, I would just delete the /etc/adjtime file. This file doesn't exist on OS X.

I'm guessing that I changed the permission of a file to read-only, so that's why I'm unable to make permanent changes to the timezone. If I knew where the timezone is stored, that would be a place to start.

As far as the Apr 29 post with the solution, I can't find it either. Any help would be appreciated.

OK, here I am with the same problem. I just installed Tiger on my G4 Powerbook and downloaded all of the numerous software updates. I'm pretty happy with it except for the same annoying problem. I can't seem to get the Time Zone selection of Pacific Time (Seattle) to 'stick'. Whenever I reset it to the proper Time Zone and select the 'automatic time check' box I see the correct time displayed in the System Preferences dialog, however the clock display on my Finder menu bar continues to display the GMT time and does not change to Pacific Time. When I reopen Date & Time in System Preferences I discover that the Time Zone continues to indicate GMT, even though I have changed it to Pacific Time. I'll try creating a new user and see if that works.

It worked. I created a new user 'Gregster' with admin privileges and successfully changed the time. I then logged out of 'Gregster' and logged back into my home account, whereupon I deleted the 'Gregster' account. So far, it looks good. I'll try rebooting to see if everything sticks.

I wish I could say the same. Still no luck here. I tried creating a new user with admin privileges, then logging in as that user and changing the timezone. But after re-opening the Date and Time preferences, it showed GMT as the timezone again. I tried logging back in as my old admin user, but the problem still exists using that account also.

I've tried changing the permissions on all com.apple.* files in /Library/Preferences/ from 640 to 660, and I changed the permissions of /Library/Preferences/.* to 660, but the time zone keeps resetting itself to GMT.

Another interesting problem, which didn't exist before, is I can't get the 'open' command to work properly on *.plist files anymore. If I run the command 'sudo open /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist' (or on an other com.apple.*.plist file) I get this error:

2005-09-26 22:49:22.850 open[1438] LSOpenFromURLSpec() returned -10814 for application (null) urls file://localhost/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist.

Well I tried Greg's suggestion to make a new user, and it kind of worked. So initially, I logged in as the new_user and tried changing the timezone to PDT (San Francisco). At first, nothing happened, I still had the wrong time in the menu bar. When I closed Date&Time and opened it again, it was back to PDT. Rejected, I logged out and back in as myself to delete the user but thought I would try once more. This time I noticed that If I clicked in random places on the world map for the timezone the clock in the menubar actually changed! This seemed a step forward so I tried clicking in California. Again the menubar clock was wrong. But for whatever reason I kept selecting along the whole west coast, and when I got to Vancouver Canada suddenly PDT stuck. Makes no sense to me but at least it was the right timezone.

I logged out, logged in as me, and it's still in PDT. I tried all of the california choices, san francisco, san diego, LA, and even Cupertino and none of those worked. I deleted the new_user, sync'd with the time server, and restarted again.
It seems to be "working".... Still not exactly a fix.

Error -10814 means it can't find the application to open this document. In the past, you could use TextEdit, but now most .plists are in binary. But it should still work if you have the Property List Editor installed (part of Developer Tools).

BTW, as well as using the Date & Time panel, are any of you going to the International panel?

I finally solved the problem. If you want the solution and don't care how I found it, just skip to the next paragraph. Adding a new administrative user didn't work, and neither did choosing a different city. I had given up on this, but stumbled onto the solution accidently. I was doing a little housecleaning deleting some old files using the command line, and I noticed some strange permissions on a dynamic linked file (/etc/localtime). Usually the permissions on linked files are 777 or 755 since it's not a regular file and it just points to another location. On my system the /etc/localtime file's permissions were 750 (lrwxr-x---). I figured the "0" could be a problem if another account needed to be able to read that file. I tried changing the permissions to 755 using "chmod 755 /etc/localtime" as root, but after viewing the file with "ls -l" there was no change?! So I deleted the link /etc/localtime and recreated it using "ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Seoul /etc/localtime" and the link had the proper permissions (755). My clock in the toolbar still displayed the time in GMT, but when I opened Date & Time, the timezone was correctly set to KST. That was the first time I've opened Date & Time and not seen GMT displayed right off the bat. To set the correct time, I just set the clock, and saved it. Now the time in the toolbar is correct and the timezone is no longer reverting to GMT. I was pretty sure the problem had to do with file permissions, and it looks like by following the security guide I changed the umask settings and that's what did it.



Here are the steps to follow to correct the problem if creating a new user doesn't work:
1. Open 'Terminal' (you can find it in Applications/Utilities)
2. Check the permissions on /etc/localtime by typing "ls -l /etc/localtime". It should be lrwxr-x-r-x. The permissions on this file don't matter too much as long as you see the letter "r" 3 times.
2.5. If you don't see "r" three times, then type "sudo rm /etc/localtime". Then type "sudo ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/[your contintent]/[your city] /etc/localtime".
Hint for the BASH shell: If don't know the continent or city, you can just type the [Tab] key twice after typing /usr/share/zoneinfo/. That will give a list of the possible continents. Do the same for the city.
3. Check the permissions on /usr/share/zoneinfo/[your continent]/[your city] (e.g. /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Los_Angeles). It should be -rw-r--r-- (or something similar). The main thing is that there should be 3 'r's.
3.5. If you don't see "r" three times, then type: "sudo chmod 644 /usr/share/zoneinfo/[your continent]/[your city]"
4. Open Date & Time and click on the Time Zone tab. It should be correct.
5. Click on the Date & Time tab.
6. If it's checked, uncheck "set date & time automatically".
7. Set the correct time. If it's already showing the correct time, just set it forward or backwards a few seconds, then click "Save".
8. The time in the toolbar should now be correct.
9. If you had to uncheck "set date & time automatically", then recheck it.