Re: Failure of postgres_fdw because of TimeZone setting

Adnan Dautovic <daut(at)mailbox(dot)org> writes:
> I have some trouble using postgres_fdw in order to display some data from a Postgres database I do not control in a Postgres database that I do control.

Hmm ...

> * PostgreSQL version number you are running:

> remote: "PostgreSQL 9.4.13 on x86_64-apple-darwin20.2.0, compiled by Apple clang version 12.0.0 (clang-1200.0.32.29), 64-bit"

> local: "PostgreSQL 13.0 (Debian 13.0-1.pgdg100+1) on x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, compiled by gcc (Debian 8.3.0-6) 8.3.0, 64-bit"

You realize of course that PG 9.4.x is four years past EOL, and that
the last release in that series was 9.4.26, so that your remote is
missing three or so years' worth of bug fixes even before its EOL.
The underlying macOS platform looks a bit hoary as well.

(You gain exactly zero points for good maintenance practice on the
local side either, since PG 13's current release is 13.14. If you're
going to install Postgres and then ignore bug-fix releases for
multiple years, I counsel not starting from a dot-zero release.
However, that doesn't seem to be related to your immediate problem.)

Having said that,

> * The EXACT TEXT of the error message you're getting, if there is one:
> ERROR:  invalid value for parameter "TimeZone": "UTC"
> CONTEXT:  remote SQL command: SET timezone = 'UTC'

That's just bizarre. There is no release of Postgres anywhere,
at any time in the past couple decades, that should not think that
"UTC" is a valid timezone setting. My best guess is that the
remote was built with a --with-system-tzdata setting that's not
actually valid for its platform.

Short answer: your remote database is very incompetently
administrated. If the remote's DBA is not willing to work on fixing
it, I suggest finding a job where you don't have to deal with that.

regards, tom lane