SCO Timezone changes

Given SCO's financial troubles, I have to wonder whether they'll issue a patch to fix the upcoming changes to DST in 2007. Fortunately, it's easy to fix this yourself by modifying /etc/TIMEZONE.

As I'm in Massachusetts, I'd change TZ=EST5EDT to TZ=EST5EDT,M3.2.0/2:00:00,M11.1.0/2:00:00 and reboot. That's simple enough, but what does it mean?

If you look at the man page for this file (man F timezone), it all becomes clear. The new DST begins at 2:00 AM on the second Sunday of March and ends at 2:00 AM on the first Sunday of November, That's expressed in TIMEZONE as "Mmonth.week.day/time,month.week.day/time". March is the third month, Sunday is day 0, and we want the second week, so M3.2.0/2:00:00 is what we want for start and M11.1.0 is the end. You could leave off the "/2:00:00" because 2:00 AM is the default.

It's that simple.

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Mon Jan 29 15:15:14 2007: Subject:   bruceg2004


What about linux, is that similar? I have some old linux servers that would be nice if I did not have to upgrade them, and do a fix like this.



Mon Jan 29 15:24:08 2007: Subject:   TonyLawrence


Linux does it differently - what to do depends on your distro..





Mon Jan 29 15:33:55 2007: Subject:   TonyLawrence


(on many, "zic" will compile the tz info) This
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?t=518752
looks like a good link..



Mon Jan 29 16:03:36 2007: Subject:   bruceg2004


Funny, I was just finishing up reading that same link!

Also, I found this site, for new tzdata to be used with 'zic'

ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/

Looks like I am not the only one running older unsupported Redhat distros inhouse, firewalled off from the world :-)

- Bruce




Tue Jan 30 18:00:27 2007: Subject:   TonyLawrence


Bill Brier pointed this new ta out:

http://wdb1.sco.com/kb/showta?taid=126600&qid=1378120634&sid=1603030878&pgnum=1





Wed Feb 7 17:04:56 2007: Subject: SCO Timezone changes   Donald


Did someone ever tested it?



Thu Feb 8 14:35:42 2007: Subject:   BigDumbDinosaur


Did someone ever test what?

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Thu Feb 15 22:10:54 2007: Subject: tb1254@netzero.net   TonyB


Will this work on SCO 5.0.0?



Fri Feb 16 03:26:49 2007: Subject:   TonyLawrence


Editing /etc/TIMEZONE will work, yes. But not the MP5 obviously.



Fri Mar 2 21:26:33 2007: Subject:   anonymous


Chris Herbsen tells us:

Just one more note on dst, sco 5.0.7.
I discovered that my problems with testing the new dst come from an intrinsic problem with sco ( and other unixs?); you CANNOT change date/time during the several months of dst, or the clock becomes very erratic, and races ahead, only settling down when the system is rebooted, remaining at the time
it raced ahead to. I discovered this when using asktime (or at boot time) to change the date to 1 minute before the november date to test the fall back from dst. In fact any time/date change during dst causes this problem.

I know it isnt an issue that would normally come up much, but it could be catastrophic on some systems if attempted. A MAN on timezone describes it as a "limitation"! Systems that have time servers updating their clocks regularly must manage this differently I guess.

You can, however, test the november date by changing the hardware clock in the bios temporarily. This test works fine.
It also appears that the bios clock remains 1 hour behind the o.s. time for the duration of the dst interval.
Just fyi.



Thu Mar 8 15:48:46 2007: Subject:   jhesswallacehainescom


Am I correct that single quotes ' need to be on either side of the time? Meaning that this: TZ=EST5EDT,M3.2.0/2:00:00,M11.1.0/2:00:00 should look like this: TZ='EST5EDT,M3.2.0/2:00:00,M11.1.0/2:00:00' That's the way it seems on the man page...Thanks! I just want to get this right so I don't need to buy SCO upgrades...my 5.0.5 works so nicely...



Thu Mar 8 16:50:47 2007: Subject:   TonyLawrence


Just look at your current TIMEZONE file..





Thu Mar 8 17:13:56 2007: Subject:   jhesswallacehainescom


So if there are 'quotes' presently, then use quotes, otherwise don't?



Sat Nov 7 09:53:00 2009: Subject:   asaf


Is there a way to to use some kind of table or script to modify
timezone for many years ahead?????

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Sat Nov 7 09:55:22 2009: Subject:   asaf


Is there a way to to use some kind of table or script to modify
timezone for many years ahead?????



Sat Nov 7 12:13:12 2009: Subject:   TonyLawrence


You are misunderstanding. Unless the daes for DST are changed again, it doesn't need to be modified.



Sat Nov 7 17:54:04 2009: Subject:   BigDumbDinosaur
http://bcstechnology.net

Is there a way to to use some kind of table or script to modify timezone for many years ahead?????

Your question makes no sense. /etc/TIMEZONE only has to be edited one time and the change will be permanent. In the even the Daylight Saving Time rules are changed again, you would edit /etc/TIMEZONE to reflect the new rules. That's all there is to it. Of course, if you are still running a SCO box by then perhaps you should make an appointment with a shrink. <Grin>



Sat Nov 7 18:02:59 2009: Subject:   TonyLawrence


if you are still running a SCO box by then perhaps you should make an appointment with a shrink.

Perhaps???

:-)



Sat Nov 7 18:18:41 2009: Subject:   BigDumbDinosaur
http://bcstechnology.net

I was being kind. <Grin>



Sat Nov 7 18:36:05 2009: Subject:   Asaf


I will try to be more clear
in my country the changes between
DST and standrt time are in relations
to religeus holidays so every year it's
diferent date!
I allready implemented a table solution
in a Linux mchine and I wonder if
such a solution can be adopted on SCO??



Sat Nov 7 18:50:16 2009: Subject:   TonyLawrence


Why not?

Where do you see the difficulty?

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