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Asked: 2026-06-10T01:44:19+00:00

If I run the following query: ALTER TABLE `price_s` ADD COLUMN `ts` TIMESTAMP NOT

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If I run the following query:

ALTER TABLE `price_s` ADD COLUMN `ts` TIMESTAMP NOT NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP ON UPDATE CURRENT_TIMESTAMP  AFTER `price_s_id` ;

The new column would be populated with 0000-00-00 00:00:00.
Value in this column won’t get updated to Current Timestamp until I modify the column, i.e. ON UPDATE CURRENT_TIMESTAMP seems to work fine.

If I run :

SELECT version( ) , @@time_zone , @@system_time_zone , NOW( ) , UTC_TIMESTAMP( )

I got:

'5.5.15', '+10:00', 'EST', '2012-08-23 14:56:59', '2012-08-23 04:56:59'

I’d like to store the UTC time in the column ts, how do I do that?

Not sure if this is relevant, I have tried to generate the mysql.time_zone* tables:

Miranda-Macbook: ./mysql_tzinfo_to_sql /usr/share/zoneinfo | ./mysql -p -u root mysql
Enter password: Warning: Unable to load '/usr/share/zoneinfo/+VERSION' as time zone. Skipping it.

Warning: Unable to load '/usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Riyadh87' as time zone. Skipping it.
Warning: Unable to load '/usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Riyadh88' as time zone. Skipping it.
Warning: Unable to load '/usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Riyadh89' as time zone. Skipping it.
Warning: Unable to load '/usr/share/zoneinfo/Mideast/Riyadh87' as time zone. Skipping it.
Warning: Unable to load '/usr/share/zoneinfo/Mideast/Riyadh88' as time zone. Skipping it.
Warning: Unable to load '/usr/share/zoneinfo/Mideast/Riyadh89' as time zone. Skipping it.
Warning: Unable to load '/usr/share/zoneinfo/iso3166.tab' as time zone. Skipping it.
Warning: Unable to load '/usr/share/zoneinfo/zone.tab' as time zone. Skipping it.

Thanks @Sameer and @Marc B.
Now I understands timestamp more.(with the help of this article)
It is already stored in UTC, so what I need is actually:

SET time_zone = 'SYSTEM';
UPDATE tablename SET ts=now()
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team
    INSERT INTO yourtable (ts) VALUES (now())
UPDATE yourtable SET ts=now()

    As long as whatever you’re stuffing into the ts field is a valid mysql timestamp string (yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss) it doesn’t matter WHAT the timezone is. That only becomes relevant upon conversion or retrieval – mysql datefields themselves have no concept of timezones, they’re just repositories of some date/time data.

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