The trouble with Timezones & Grid Infrastructure

When installing Oracle Grid Infrastructure 11.2 (and all other releases), you need to make sure that you have all of the server setting correct and to standard before you do the install. One that bit me recently was the timezone setting. The Red Hat 6.4 server(s) in question has the correct file in /etc/localtime (copied from /usr/share/zoneinfo/whatever). If I type in date, I get the reply in the correct timezone (GMT/BST as I’m in London), so all seems correct.

However, the slack Unix Sysadmin (which might or might not have been me) had not put the correct setting in /etc/sysconfig/clock. Unfortunately, when you install Grid Infrastructure, the setting is read from /etc/sysconfig/clock and embedded into a Grid Inforastructure config file. $GRID_HOME/crs/install/s_crsconfig_hostname_env.txt

### This file can be used to modify the NLS_LANG environment variable, which determines the charset to be used for messages.

### For example, a new charset can be configured by setting NLS_LANG=JAPANESE_JAPAN.UTF8

### Do not modify this file except to change NLS_LANG, or under the direction of Oracle Support Services

TZ=Europe/London

NLS_LANG=AMERICAN_AMERICA.AL32UTF8

TNS_ADMIN=

ORACLE_BASE=

If you change this entry, and you should check with Oracle Support if this is OK for your site, and you will need to restart Grid Infrastructure. The one thing about this that I really don’t like is that Oracle is storing a runtime configuration file in a an install directory. Does it do that anywhere else?