[galvanash]

Thought this might help some people. The ATV2 uses NTP to sync the time, but occasionally the timezone is setup wrong and this results in XBMC displaying the wrong time. The fix is different than for the original ATV, so here are the instructions.

Note: Before doing this you will need to get the correct timezone "path" on your system. you can do this by going to /usr/share/zoneinfo looking at the directories to figure it out. For example, in /usr/share/zoneinfo you will see a bunch of folders like "Europe", "Canada", "US", etc. Pick the one of your area, and then cd to that folder and list its contents. This will list the files associated with each timezone for your area - pick the one that matches you desired zone.

If you want to cheat and are in the US, these are all the values for the United States:

US/Alaska
US/Aleutian
US/Arizona
US/Central
US/East-Indiana
US/Eastern
US/Hawaii
US/Indiana-Starke
US/Michigan
US/Mountain
US/Pacific
US/Samoa

Use Putty or other SSH client to log into ATV2.

Code:

cd /var/db/timezone
rm localtime
ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/[Country or Region]/[Zone Name] localtime

So for example, to set the timezone to US Mountain, you would type:

Code:

cd /var/db/timezone
rm localtime
ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/US/Mountain localtime

There does not appear to be any need to reboot or do anything else - I think iOS monitors changes to that file and updates accordingly - it did for me at least.

[bwelton]

I just did this but received an error.

/private/var/db/timezone$ ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/London localtime
ln: creating symbolic link `localtime': File exists


File permissions of `localtime' are 0777, what should they be ?

Sorry to ask a Dumb question, be easy in me ;-)

[npkamen]

I just did this but received an error.

/private/var/db/timezone$ ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/London localtime
ln: creating symbolic link `localtime': File exists


File permissions of `localtime' are 0777, what should they be ?

Sorry to ask a Dumb question, be easy in me ;-)

You should be in /var/db/timezone not /private/var/db/timezone

Also you need to remove the existing localtime symbolic link before you can create a new one.

[bwelton]

I think the directory is one in the same, however I had not removed teh existing 'localtime' file

Done this and it now works.

Many thanks

[kidstretch]

i can't make it work, any help? i have the atv 2, made all the commands, reboot apple tv, same time error.
i live in greece.

[crawf57]

Worked great for me in Adelaide , Australia

ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Australia/Adelaide localtime

[piotr]

Tried this and set timezone to Europe/Amsterdam but the time in XBMC is still one hour behind.....

[abhsc]

Thanks for the concise instructions. Worked like a charm to get on to US EST.

[Gromit65]

Tried this and set timezone to Europe/Amsterdam but the time in XBMC is still one hour behind.....

Try "ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Etc/GMT-1 localtime". Works for me here in Switzerland :-)

[Vatoe]

Nice. Finally got to fix this little annoying issue..

ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Australia/Sydney localtime

Thanks very much..

[AxxT]

If you get an error like: File exists
Use: unlink localtime

Then try it again =)

[jd2157]

Maybe I'm remembering this wrong but weren't the devs planning on exposing the timezone setting in the GUI? I'd guess System > Appearance > International would be a logical place to put it.

The one issue I can think of that may be keeping them from implementing is they may not want to change atv2 iOS settings from within the XBMC interface.

Anyway, anyone know if there's a plan to put this in the XBMC GUI? It'd save a lot of folks from the command line.

[bircoe]

4.3 has this built into frontrow... wait for tethered jailbreak and upgrade.

[pecospete]

Just use "ln -sf ..." instead of "ln -s..." to force overwrite the existing file.

[dangermoose]

Just in case anyone in the UK is having issues with the change to BST... I was lazy when I set my time and used

ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/GMT

To change to BST I ran

ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/London

Notice the -sf to force overwrite.

Hope this helps someone out.