System time is off more than 2 hours

This situation can happen if your system time was incorrectly adjusted for observance of daylight saving time (DST), or if the time zone was set incorrectly during IBM® i installation.

If the system time is off more than 2 hours, one or more of the following conditions might exist:

  • The time zone automatically adjusted the system time one hour for DST and the system time was adjusted manually one hour for DST. Therefore, the system time adjusted a total of 2 hours for DST rather than one hour.
  • The time zone was set incorrectly during the installation of the operating system due to any of the following conditions:
    • The offset used to determine the time zone was wrong.
    • The wrong time zone was selected.
    • The offset specified in the time zone description was incorrect.

If you attempt to make a time adjustment for more than 2 hours, you will receive an error message stating that you cannot make an adjustment that is greater than 2 hours.

Recovery steps

To recover from this situation, you can perform one of two different methods. You can manually change the Time of day system value or you can use multiple time adjustments until the desired time value is reached. The method you use to change the time of day depends on how quickly the system time needs to be fixed.

If you need to change the system time immediately, you must manually change the Time of day system value. If you do not need to change the system time immediately, you can use multiple time adjustments to gradually reach the desired time value. The adjustment method requires multiple time adjustments because the maximum time adjustment allowed is 2 hours and your system time is off more than 2 hours. For more information about the implications of manually changing the system time versus using a time adjustment, see Time adjustment.

Before changing the system time using either method, complete the following steps:

  1. Verify the time zone properties.
  2. Verify the time system values.
Note: If you are making an adjustment using the time adjustment function, you will need to make multiple time adjustments until the desired time is reached.