[Mediawiki-l] Server Time incorrect - where is the offset?

[a@kid]

My server time that's appearing in the user preferences Time Zone  
panel (and that is also being used when writing to page_touched in  
the db) is incorrect. It's several hours ahead of the timestamp i get  
from date('YmdHis') in php or CURRENT_TIME() in mysql.

I have looked everywhere to try to find out where the offset is  
coming from but with no luck. I don't have either $wgLocaltimezone or  
$wgLocalTZoffset set so i know that these are not the culprits.

Does anyone know why my server time is being offset?
What other places should i look?

thanks