I couldn’t find this information anywhere so I’m writing it. If you installed mysql (and I mean MariaDB) through homebrew then you might find some trouble when trying to set your timezone to UTC or GMT.

Edit /usr/local/etc/my.cnf. Add a new section at the bottom:

[mysqld]
default-time-zone='+00:00'

Restart mysql.

> select @@global.time_zone;
+--------------------+
| @@global.time_zone |
+--------------------+
| +00:00             |
+--------------------+

Alternatively, you could break this out into a file called /usr/local/etc/my.cnf.d/gmt.cnf

[mysqld]
default-time-zone='+00:00'

The plus sign is critical. If you find any tips/tricks related to this, send them to me on twitter. Contact information is there on the sidebar.