KB-1804 Tomcat fails to load with "The server time zone value 'XXX ' is unrecognized or represents more than one time zone."

Symptoms

Tomcat fails with the following error in <APPIAN_HOME>/logs/tomcat-stdOut.log:

WARNING [localhost-startStop-1] org.apache.naming.NamingContext.lookup Unexpected exception resolving reference java.sql.SQLException: Cannot create PoolableConnectionFactory (The server time zone value 'CEST' is unrecognized or represents more than one time zone. You must configure either the server or JDBC driver (via the serverTimezone configuration property) to use a more specifc time zone value if you want to utilize time zone support.)
...
Caused by: java.sql.SQLException: The server time zone value 'XXX' is unrecognized or represents more than one time zone. You must configure either the server or JDBC driver (via the serverTimezone configuration property) to use a more specifc time zone value if you want to utilize time zone support.

Cause

This is a known issue with versions 5.1.33 to 5.1.37 of the MySQL JDBC Driver. Navigate to the following directory to find the version being used for the corresponding Appian instance: <APPIAN_HOME>\tomcat\apache-tomcat\lib.

Action

Update to the latest version of the MySQL JDBC Driver as mentioned in the Appian System Requirements documentation.

Affected Versions

This article applies to Appian 18.3 and later.

Last Reviewed: November 2018