I ran into a strange issue today on a SunOS 5.11 11.4.24.75.2 sun4v sparc sun4v server. When I used the “date” command, I would see the current date and time displayed as (for example) 15:25 ET. I then created a CRON entry for 15:35 ET. However, the script would not execute at the time defined in CRON. I checked the usual permissions etc., but nothing worked. After some trial and error, a colleague identified that the user’s profile had the following entries:
TZ="EST5EDT" export TZ
The server was actually running GMT, but the time was being displayed in ET. The scripts I was scheduling in the displayed time (ET) were not executing because CRON was scheduling the jobs in GMT.
After the above two lines were commented out, and the CRON entries defined in GMT, the scripts executed at the expected times.
Been there, done that, and got spanked by management.
I wish I had asked you. I wasted hours 🙂