diff --git a/Dockerfile b/Dockerfile
index d7e6932088fb6b0826493f3829e2419d149d0a81..cb2c87fa44007e9fc180582a83f734f85c91ae29 100644
--- a/Dockerfile
+++ b/Dockerfile
@@ -2,6 +2,7 @@ FROM debian:stable
 
 RUN apt-get -yqq update
 RUN apt-get -yqq install virtualenv python python-dev vim git gcc libevent-dev libxml2-dev libxslt-dev patch beanstalkd mariadb-server libmariadb-dev libmariadbclient-dev-compat sqlite3
+RUN apt-get -yqq install procps
 
 # RUN echo "create database fod;" | mysql -u root
 
diff --git a/flowspy/settings.py.dist b/flowspy/settings.py.dist
index 4a592251ff6eb4846963faac92a8a5477debb04d..4d533337be8983c12e6958d9ae32de5b373cb93e 100644
--- a/flowspy/settings.py.dist
+++ b/flowspy/settings.py.dist
@@ -66,7 +66,8 @@ DATABASES = {
 # http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tz_zones_by_name
 # although not all choices may be available on all operating systems.
 # In a Windows environment this must be set to your system time zone.
-TIME_ZONE = 'Europe/Athens'
+#TIME_ZONE = 'Europe/Athens'
+TIME_ZONE = 'UTC'
 
 # Language code for this installation. All choices can be found here:
 # http://www.i18nguy.com/unicode/language-identifiers.html
diff --git a/runfod.sh b/runfod.sh
index 4fe676d711c6c35cb481572f97d263215a74d6e8..6b12fb1803daef650a8ef887a2aa287d7b40636f 100755
--- a/runfod.sh
+++ b/runfod.sh
@@ -3,6 +3,15 @@
 export LC_ALL="C" # this will unfortunatelly break ./manage.py createsuperuser as locale string is literally used to derive encoding
 . /srv/venv/bin/activate
 
+if [ ! -e /srv/flowspy/pythonenv ]; then
+	cat > /srv/flowspy/pythonenv <<EOF
+#!/bin/bash
+. /srv/venv/bin/activate
+exec "\$@"
+EOF
+	chmod +x /srv/flowspy/pythonenv
+fi
+
 ##
 
 # fix needed to make sure gevent works # may be put into Dockerfile instead
@@ -20,8 +29,10 @@ cd "$(dirname "$0")"
 echo "Starting services FoD is depending on generically: beanstalkd" 1>&2
 service beanstalkd start
 
-echo "Starting DB services FoD might be depending on (depending on its config): mysql" 1>&2
-service mysql start
+if [ ! -x ./fodcli_db_is_mysql ] || ./fodcli_db_is_mysql; then
+  echo "Starting DB services FoD might be depending on (depending on its config): mysql" 1>&2
+  service mysql start
+fi
 
 # hook to initiallize (without any user interaction admin user and its peer data)
 [ -x ./fodcli_insert_basic_data.sh ] && ./fodcli_insert_basic_data.sh