'Daylight Savings Bugs' Loom 403
An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet has front page coverage of the looming daylight savings changeover, and the bugs that may crop up this year. With the extension of daylight savings time by four weeks, some engineers and programmers are warning that unprepared companies will experience serious problems in March. While companies like Microsoft have already patched their software, Gartner is warning that bugs in the travel and banking sectors could have unforeseen consequences in the coming months. ' In addition, trading applications might execute purchases and sales at the wrong time, and cell phone-billing software could charge peak rates at off-peak hours. On top of that, the effect is expected to be felt around the world: Canada and Bermuda are conforming to the U.S.-mandated change, and time zone shifts have happened in other locales as well.'" Is this just more Y2K doomsaying, or do you think there's a serious problem here?
Things you should know. (Score:5, Informative)
A year ago, after most of Indiana went through its first timezone change in 40+ years, we found out that it presented a few problems in Linux, I tried to post a story to Slashdot about it to warn other people in the US that they would be dealing with this problem later when the rest of the US changes to the new DST. I tried several times to post it and they were all rejected.
Basically, you need to make sure that if you change your timezone data on your system that you restart everything, otherwise when the time does change, some programs continue to use the old timezone data and are an hour off.
it is a real concern (Score:2, Informative)
A site that will give you USEFUL Info..... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.reganfamily.ca/dst/ [reganfamily.ca]
This is likely more useful than the original article. It has resources for everything from Blackberries to UNIX.
There is no time bank (Score:1, Informative)
Ahem, Not Exactly (Score:5, Informative)
Ahem, not exactly. No patch for the perfectly good Exchange 5.5 server we're using with Outlook 2000. Suddenly we have to update to the latest Exchange and Outlook 2003 on every d@mn desktop. And I'm in Arizona were we don't even have daylight savings time!!!
Re:Things you should know. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Ahem, Not Exactly (Score:3, Informative)
A round of applause for the tz guys (Score:3, Informative)
If you're a Firefox person, FoxClocks (see my URL above) puts nice little world clocks on your statusbar. And yes, it uses tz too. Thanks guys. Andy
Re:Linux? (Score:2, Informative)
You're exactly right, except for the parts where you're talking out of your ass. There are automatic updates for XP and 2000, and instructions for updating Nt4 manually. Vista does in fact ship with the updated DST rules.
saving, not savingS (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Not such a big deal (Score:5, Informative)
There is a freeware utility to apply the DST patch on Win2K machines here [intelliadmin.com] (as a bonus, it also supports WinNT).
Note that you may also need to update the Java JRE/JDK.
yes, there is a bug (Score:0, Informative)
Re:Ahem, Not Exactly (Score:2, Informative)
This article says Outlook 2000 is fine as long as the OS is patched: http://support.microsoft.com/gp/dst_topissues [microsoft.com]
This article discusses how CDO is the only reason Exchange needs to be patched: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926666 [microsoft.com]
The Outlook appointment tool is here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931667 [microsoft.com]
The Exchange server version is here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930879 [microsoft.com]
Don't laugh (Score:3, Informative)
As Dr Phil would say "what WERE you thinking"?
Apple (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Linux? (Score:2, Informative)
Where's the "automatic update" for Windows 2000?
From the URL you directed us to:
So it sounds like they have a fix, but I need to pay to get it?!
Re:Not such a big deal (Score:3, Informative)
Re:y2k = media working for once (Score:5, Informative)
The DST thing is pretty evil too because it's usually up to runtime stacks like Java and CRT to decide on the timezone and time. If they give you the wrong time you're screwed. For the most part you might be okay if everything resolves down to some registry entries or timezone data files but that isn't always the case. There are functions such as Microsoft's _tzset() which are HARDCODED to a particular behaviour and apps that link to the CRT or have their own DLLs will be broken unless you recompile them.
Re:rates? (Score:2, Informative)
NTP uses UTC (Score:3, Informative)
So you need to patch unless you don't care about your clocks being off. Or you're in an area unaffected by recent changes.
Re:Things you should know. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Things you should know. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:daylight savings time is stupid (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Bermuda? (Score:2, Informative)
You are totally without a clue (Score:1, Informative)
This completely ignores a VITAL fact... computers are binary, NOT decimal. The number 100 is significant and moves to 3 digits in decimal space, but is UNINTERESTING in binary
There were (are) a TON of systems that store dates, not as a number, but as 2 characters. You young whippersnappers may think everything works the way you learned in school, but mainframes still run the world.
Verify your Linux box is correct. (Score:4, Informative)
notice that the isdst changes from 0 to 1 on March 11. This means I have the correct zoneinfo file in my system.
% ls -l
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 30 2006-09-24 21:50
PS - likely the steps to check this on FreeBSD are similar. Post your experiences.
Re:Bermuda? (Score:3, Informative)
"Bermuda is farther north than Caribbean destinations. Located in the Atlantic, Bermuda's latitude is equal to that of North Carolina. " [planetware.com]
Re:Things you should know. (Score:3, Informative)
Amen!
Seagate [seagate.com] and Peregrine/HP [peregrine.com] have some really nice, robust, Data Center Management software for managing 10s, 100s, or even thousands of computers and the software on them... you can push, say, SP2 to all 5000 machines, and it's like a few clicks to do it.. and it takes care of everything! Then you check the error report, etc. to make sure that none of the known machines encountered an error (or were turned off at the time), and then you address them individually...
With the # of servers that you are talking about, I wouldn't even think of doing it manually.. unless you get paid by the hour and literately have nothing else to do for the next few months (or year - as per your statement about almost being done after having started the update(s) a number of months back..) It would be well worth your investment to install something like this so that you could push a patch, or a simple update (like windows malicious software removal tool monthly update, etc.) to selected machines, or all machines, and do it from a single console..
To each his own though..
Re:Solaris will be a problem? (Score:3, Informative)
How to build the Unix Zoneinfo Time Zone Files Manually
Build binary zone files:
1: download the latest copy of ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/tzdata*.tar.gz [nih.gov]. This will include the details of the DST change. You could also update the source files by hand i.e.: /usr/share/lib/zoneinfo/src in solaris
2: view file to ensure necessary changes have been made.
3: compile the binary zone file per the instructions of the time zone compiler 'zic' which comes with the system.
4: install the new binary zone file over the current zone file, making sure all symbolic links, etc, are updated as needed.
I hate to be the first to point out... (Score:3, Informative)
It's "Daylight Saving Time" NOT Savings...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time
How to test if your linux machine is ready (Score:5, Informative)
> date --date="Mar 10 15:00:00 UTC 2007"
Sat Mar 10 10:00:00 EST 2007
> date --date="Mar 11 15:00:00 UTC 2007"
Sun Mar 11 11:00:00 EDT 2007
This won't set your clock or anything, it just does the timezone conversion from UTC and displays the results according to the local timezone you have selected.
-1 False (Score:3, Informative)
Windows is stupid in a whole lot of ways. But it is not utterly lacking in basic requirements like time handling.
Re:How to test if your linux machine is ready (Score:5, Informative)
> date --date="Mar 10 15:00:00 UTC 2007"
Sat Mar 10 10:00:00 EST 2007
> date --date="Mar 11 15:00:00 UTC 2007"
Sun Mar 11 11:00:00 EDT 2007
This won't set your clock or anything, it just does the timezone conversion from UTC and displays the results according to the local timezone you have selected.
Re:Mod Parent Up (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Things you should know. (Score:3, Informative)
The Sun JRE updater has to be run on each installed version of the JRE. Remove the old ones? Not a chance - could break an app. What about 1.3, well, you're SOL.
IBM thought they were brilliant with their 1.4 & 1.5 implimentation - They roll the ZI info into the Core.JAR file. No one will monkey with it there. Their updater unpacks the CORE.Jar file, updates the ZI table, then zips it back up and copies it to the JRE directory. Unless the JRE is running, in which case the jar file is locked and can't be over written. Copy it to the JRE directory, mark it for replacement? No chance, you have to unload the JRE and run the tool again.
Where's the IBM JRE? MQ Series, IBM Director for our blades, Tivoli. So I need to log on to each box, stop tivoli, MQ Series and the director agent, run the IBM patch tool (which is a POS, since you have to run it *twice*, once to "discover" the JRE's and versions, once to fix them) then reboot the box.
Next week MS is releasing the CRT library patches, since they fubar the _tzset() Posix call. And oh yes, that's a server reboot there also.
What a PITA.
I've definitely lost more of my hair this month then ever before.
Makes me *really* want to leave IT.
Re:Things you should know. (Score:2, Informative)
However, I heard from one of the Unix guys (solaris, linux, AIX, HP-UX, younameit) that after getting halfway through patching the systems, which apparently requires a reboot, IBM told them that Java also requires a patch which also requires (or recommends) a reboot. So they had to start all over again because nobody thought to check Java before they started. If you support systems that use Java and hadn't heard about that yet, you will definitely want to look into it.