Re: BUG #5912: Etc/GMT time utc offset error

"Ross Williams" <ross(dot)williams(at)watchguard(dot)com> writes:
> On the target OS the offsets are correct GMT+ gives a increased utc_offset.
> When I attempt to set via postgres, the timezone are flipped + for - and
> vice versa.

The problem is that there are conflicting standards for the sign of UTC
offsets. The conventions Postgres has chosen are not 100% consistent,
but neither is the real world. There's some discussion in this
section of the manual:

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.4/static/datatype-datetime.html#DATATYPE-TIMEZONES

in particular this bit:

Another issue to keep in mind is that in POSIX time zone names,
positive offsets are used for locations west of
Greenwich. Everywhere else, PostgreSQL follows the ISO-8601
convention that positive timezone offsets are east of Greenwich.

regards, tom lane