Time in the EMR not in sync with the configured timezone

nilyas121 · February 20, 2024, 12:47am

Hi,

We have installed OpenEMR 7.0 locally in our clinic. We have updated timezone in php.ini to be Asia/Karachi. Same timezone is also updated in the Admin → Globals → Locales.

Currently throughout system we see the time is 13 hours ahead. This is very strange as the time shown by system is not a valid time. I am new user so can’t attach multiple screenshots. Please see screenshots in this onedrive link: Images

Asia/Karachi is UTC+05:00 and system is adding 13 hours which becomes UTC+18:00. I don’t think UTC+18:00 is even a timezone. Also in above onedrive link are the mysql and php timezones screenshots for more clarity.

We are running openemr in xampp.

Can you please suggest how I can fix this issue?

Regards,
Numan Ilyas

stephenwaite · February 20, 2024, 3:58pm

hi @nilyas121 , did you restart the apache server inside of xampp after you made the changes?

nilyas121 · February 20, 2024, 7:55pm

Yes Stephen, we restarted apache multiple times. It did picked up the timezone change but not sure why it’s adding 13 hours to the system time.

luisuriarte · February 20, 2024, 10:34pm

Try putting the time zone in \xampp\php\php.ini : date.timezone = Asia/Karachi. Then create a script (for example info.php) with the following:

<?php
phpinfo();
?>

in htdocs. Restart Apache and check in the browser http://localhost/info.php if the time zone is correct

nilyas121 · February 20, 2024, 11:08pm

thanks @luisuriarte for reviewing this. We have made the change in the xampp\php\php.ini and phpinfo shows correct timezone. Please see below:

Penguin8R · February 21, 2024, 10:44pm

Check the timezone setting in your MySQL/MariaDB server, all the timestamps in your data tables are determined by that, setting the PHP timezone will have no effect on the records the SQL daemon is writing.

stephenwaite · February 22, 2024, 4:54pm

what’s your setting in Admin->Config/Locale?

nilyas121 · February 23, 2024, 12:17pm

Thank you @Penguin8R - it was the issue. System timezone was set to Pacific (UTC-8). However system clock was manually updated to be in Asia/Karachi. Mysql timezone was set to SYSTEM so it was causing the problem.
I think this incorrect setup was leading to incorrect calculation in open-emr and it was showing time as UTC+13.
Thanks again!

nilyas121 · February 23, 2024, 12:19pm

Thank you @stephenwaite for checking. Locale setting is correct. Issue was the system timezone. It was set to Pacific (UTC-8) and system clock was manually overridden to Asia/Karachi which caused confusion.