Java giving wrong time

[CptPicard]

Ok, this is on Debian Etch so not really Ubuntu but I think I'll ask anyway as it's likely someone is able to give me a good answer...

I am setting up a Java web application on my new Debian server, and running into an oddity with Java's time. System time and timezone are correct as far as I know:

Your default time zone is set to 'Europe/Helsinki'.
Local time is now:      Sun Sep 16 07:25:02 EEST 2007.
Universal Time is now:  Sun Sep 16 04:25:02 UTC 2007.

However, with Java code that essentially does System.out.println(new Date()) we get:

voitto:~# java Testi
Sun Sep 16 06:30:45 GMT+02:00 2007

So Java is an hour behind -- This is going to be a total showstopper for this deployment until it is resolved

Nothing like this on my Ubuntu development box! It probably has something to do with summer time, but no idea how to fix this...

[dwhitney67]

Maybe this article will help you.

[CptPicard]

Thanks lots for the pointer, looks like the problem I'm having... reading it now.

Quite unforgivable of Java really to have such a fundamental behaviour difference even between two Linuxes, both running Java 1.5.. "Write once run anywhere", my ***

EDIT: Ok, so it's a matter of setting TZ or -Duser.timezone=Europe/Helsinki. *Phew*. Interesting though that Debian's Sun Java can deduce the GMT+2 bit of timezone information but not the DST adjusted one, while Ubuntu doesn't have TZ set and the Java timezone information is correct....

EDIT2: Heh, weirdness. Just for posterity, let it be recorded that this solved it. Java doesn't like /etc/localtime unless it's a symlink (which it isn't even on my Ubuntu box), and making it a symlink makes Java like the timezone data