Topic: New Daylight Savings Time DST for parts of North America

[pwgsc1]

Hi Folks,

I know some states in the US and some Provinces in Canada are doing a new DST schedule this year.   I believe it's new weeks earlier then normal and two weeks later.

I found this post from William about a DST change in Aus.   I assume the file he pointed to would be updated for these changes?

Thanks,

Craig

[imcintyre]

This from a Canadian.gov website would appear to be the actual dates/times for the new DST schedule.

Starting in 2007, clocks following the new North American standard for Daylight Saving Time are to be turned forward by one hour on the second Sunday in March and turned back on the first Sunday of November.

Is this something that is already in v7 or v7.1.  What about v6?  Thanks in advance for any help.

[crazybob]

I did a little digging at the centos, then red hat website, and it appears that if your SME is up to date, the problem is taken care of.

[gordonr]

What about v6?

See the End Of Life announcement here:

    http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=35042.0

Let me be clear - that means no patches, not even security patches, will be released.

[jimgoode]

I run several flavors of Linux servers and found that I needed to manually update the timezone files on several to comply with the new policy that goes into effect in 2007. Basically, DST starts 3 weeks earlier and ends 1 week later. I am in the U.S. Central time zone. The following works for Red Hat 7.3, 8.0, and SME 6.0.1-01. I am downloading a new SME 7 ISO, since the one I had would not install. We are still waiting for a patch for IPCop 1.4.13.

If you use these notes to make your changes, you may need to substitute a different zone file in place of my CST6CDT file name.

1) Run 'zdump -v /etc/localtime | grep 2007' to see if your timezone file is new. Use the full path to localtime, or you might get invalid results. My initial results were as follows, which is the old rules.

/etc/localtime  Sun Apr  1 07:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Apr  1 01:59:59 2007 CST isdst=0 gmtoff=-21600
/etc/localtime  Sun Apr  1 08:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Apr  1 03:00:00 2007 CDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-18000
/etc/localtime  Sun Oct 28 06:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Oct 28 01:59:59 2007 CDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-18000
/etc/localtime  Sun Oct 28 07:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Oct 28 01:00:00 2007 CST isdst=0 gmtoff=-21600

2) Locate the raw source for the timezone file. If you have all the source loaded on your system it might be in /usr/src/redhat/source/glibc-2.2.93/timezone and the file you want to update is northamerica. I created a copy named northamerica.new and changed it. A diff of the two files after making changes produced the following results.

diff northamerica northamerica.new
97c97,98
< Rule  US      1967    max     -       Oct     lastSun 2:00    0       S
---
> Rule  US      1967    2006    -       Oct     lastSun 2:00    0       S
> Rule  US      2007    max     -       Nov     Sun>=1  2:00    0       S
102c103,104
< Rule  US      1987    max     -       Apr     Sun>=1  2:00    1:00    D
---
> Rule  US      1987    2006    -       Apr     Sun>=1  2:00    1:00    D
> Rule  US      2007    max     -       Mar     Sun>=8  2:00    1:00    D

3) Compile the time zone files using 'zic -d ~/zonedir northamerica.new'
The -d parameter forces the results to go into a specified directory, and avoids overlaying the current zone file directly.

4) Verify the resulting timezone file. I used

zdump -v /root/zonedir/CST6CDT | grep 2007
/root/zonedir/CST6CDT  Sun Mar 11 07:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Mar 11 01:59:59 2007 CST isdst=0 gmtoff=-21600
/root/zonedir/CST6CDT  Sun Mar 11 08:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Mar 11 03:00:00 2007 CDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-18000
/root/zonedir/CST6CDT  Sun Nov  4 06:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Nov  4 01:59:59 2007 CDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-18000
/root/zonedir/CST6CDT  Sun Nov  4 07:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Nov  4 01:00:00 2007 CST isdst=0 gmtoff=-21600

5) Replace the localtime file. On SME 6.0.1-01 this is done by replacing the /usr/share/zoneinfo/US/Central file. /etc/localtime is a symbolic link to the actual file being used. I renamed the Central file to Central.old and copied the CST6CDT file in as Central. In the case of the Red Hat 7.3 and 8.0 systems I renamed /etc/localtime to localtime.old and copied the CST6CDT file in as /etc/localtime.

If you have to update several systems, it is not necessary to compile the zone files on each. I found that I could simply copy the CST6CDT file over and use it on each.

HTH, Jim

[imcintyre]

Found this:

http://www.tech-geeks.org/contrib/mdrone/DST-on-SME-6.0.1-01.php

[mercyh]

Hi,

My sme 7.1.2 showed the new rules with the command:

'zdump -v /etc/localtime | grep 2007'