Sydney timezone info wrong UPDATE-V0600

[John Welsh_2]

Mar 31, 2008 04:22:16 GMT

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Hi all,
It appears that the Daylight Saving Rules for NSW and Victoria in [SYS$ZONEINFO.SYSTEM.SOURCES]AUSTRALASIA.;1; are wrong. I haven't checked other states.
I have several Alpha systems running V8.3 with UPDATE_V0600 kit installed which has a timezone component in the kit.
The systems switched to non daylight savings time yesterday ie: last Sunday in March which is what is in the AUSTRALASIA.;1 file !!

The correct rules should be:

Apr Sun>=1 and Oct Sun>=1 ie: first sundays in April and October.

Has anyone used zic in SYS$SYSTEM: to compile a new version as there doesn't appear to be a correct zone file for Australasia on the ITRC site ???

[Hoff]

The folks in the support center should have details and files; they're traditionally pretty good at this, and this looks to be a fairly nasty issue. If you have a contract, use it.

If you want to head after zic on your own on OpenVMS Alpha, here are some details:

http://64.223.189.234/node/148

[John Gillings · Accepted solution]

Hi John,

Unfortunately Australia doesn't exist as far as the yanks are concerned, so DST changes over here just don't appear on the radar. Up until very recently DST changes *anywhere* didn't rate a patch - it was always deemed the responsibility of the system manager - until, of course, some of the DST rules in the USA changed, THEN it was a dire emergency! (and that's not just HP)

The Sydney CSC has a DST update for Australasian rules which you can obtain by logging a case.

If you don't have a contract, you can do it yourself. Update your timezone rules file, then use ZIC:

$ SET DEFAULT SYS$TZDIR
$ zic -v -d SYS$COMMON:[SYS$ZONEINFO.SYSTEM] "sources/australasia"

[John Welsh_2]

Thanks Hoff and John,

I spent yesterday experimenting with zic and also found a reference to the show function of utc$time_setup.com. I have zic'd my test system successfully and now I just have to zic the live systems ready for next Sunday morning.

I also had a few customers with the same problem on Tru64 ( an early switch ). Used zdump and zic to update the rules.
Best regards, John Welsh.

[DSM_1]

The following column appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald last Thursday (March 27th).

http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/just-keep-your-hands-off-my-clock/2008/03/26/1206207205021.html

I wrote it last Tuesday after we discovered the VMS timezone rule problem during testing. Although that was just one of several issues we had with different software suppliers.

We use VMS 7.3-2 so the details are different, but the essence is the same. Not being a VMS admin myself, I don't know how easy or hard it would have been to change it manually, but we got the update from HP on the Tuesday (25th). I am told it had been requested long before this.

We tested the update on a non-production machine, intending to apply it to production on Thursday. Very early Wednesday morning we had a software issue which required us to reboot the production nodes (fastest fix). When they came up, they had the wrong timezone offset, even though we had yet to reach the last Sunday in March. My colleague fixed the problem fairly quickly, but it was yet another surprise.

[Paul Jerrom]

New Zealand is the same. Just be careful if you do use ZIC that whenever you apply an UPDATE patch you'll need to re-copy the changed file acoss again, as it gets overwritten.

1) Alter the daylight savings rule file, which is sys$sysroot:[sys$zoneinfo.system.sources]australasia.
2) Now compile the timezone file

$ create/dir SYS$SYSROOT:[SYS$ZONEINFO.USER.australia]
$ zic australasia

3)Copy this file to the correct directory

$ copy sys$sysroot:[sys$zoneinfo.user]nz.; sys$common:[sys$zoneinfo.system]*.*;

[Subs NZ with your time zone file]

4) Now run the procedure to set the timezone

$ @sys$startup:utc$time_setup

To check, view the TQEs for the JOB_CONTROL process:

$ analyse/system
SDA> set proc/index=0d (or whatever PID the JOB_CONTROL process is)
SDA> show process/tqe

[This assumes you are using NTP and have AUTO_DLIGHT_SAV set to 1. Note it only shows the entries remaining for this calendar year, next year's are set on Jan 1st.]

[John Welsh_2]

Thanks to all who responded. We obtained the
official CSC patch after logging a call and
all went well last Sunday 6th.
Regards to all,
John Welsh.
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