Apache configuration help -- Why are different processes "in" different time zones?

Question

I have Apache 2 running on a VPS server (running Debian). I recently changed the timezone on the server (using dpkg-reconfigure tzdata) from America/New_York to America/Los_Angeles to match my move across country. I have also rebooted the virtual machine since making the change.

However, the Apache processes seem to flitter between timezones. See this snippet from the access_log:

127.0.0.1 - - [02/Oct/2008:23:01:13 -0700] "GET /favicon.ico HTTP/1.0" 301 - "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.0.3) Gecko/2008092414 Firefox/3.0.3"
127.0.0.1 - - [03/Oct/2008:02:01:25 -0400] "GET /tag/wikipedia/?page=1 HTTP/1.0" 200 5984 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)"
127.0.0.1 - - [03/Oct/2008:02:01:36 -0400] "GET /index.atom HTTP/1.0" 200 7648 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.0.2) Gecko/2008091618 Firefox/3.0.2"
127.0.0.1 - - [03/Oct/2008:02:01:45 -0400] "GET /tag/moblog/ HTTP/1.0" 200 6563 "-" "msnbot/1.1 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)"
127.0.0.1 - - [02/Oct/2008:23:01:46 -0700] "GET /tag/opensource/ HTTP/1.0" 200 5954 "-" "msnbot/1.1 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)"
127.0.0.1 - - [03/Oct/2008:02:01:56 -0400] "GET /tag/dopplr/ HTTP/1.0" 200 3407 "-" "msnbot/1.1 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)"

It jumps from 23:01 to 02:01 and back. Any idea how I can keep it consistent?

Answer 1

Possibly some of the Apache worker processes were started before you changes the timezone, and some afterwards. Have you completely stopped and re-started Apache since changing the system timezone setting?

Answer 2

Are you by any chance using ntpd and the peers against which you synchronize are flaky?

Answer 3

As it turns out, I had two Django projects running on this Apache instance, one of which I had fixed to point to America/Los_Angeles, but the other I had left behind. Depending on which app was accessed first when a new Apache process was created, it would muck up the time zone!