Andres Freund <andres@2ndquadrant.com> writes:
> Setting the timezone to 'localtime' seems to work as well, even without
> a patch. I haven't found any documentation about it and I am not
> completely sure about the semantics, but it looks ok on a first glance.
I think on most distros that use the Olson tz database, 'localtime' is
defined by means of adding a symlink in the system timezone directory.
It's going to refer to whatever zone was chosen as the system-wide
default. That would match what the postmaster sees as the system
timezone if you have not set TZ in its environment ... but it would also
match what initdb sees as the system timezone. I'm still not sure what
the OP actually wants to accomplish by moving the time of making the
choice.
regards, tom lane