Solaris Daylight Saving Time (DST) Update

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Impact

Daylight Saving Time (DST) and time zone definitions changes occur in different countries around the world on a regular basis. This Sun Alert will be used to track ongoing daylight saving and timezone changes for Solaris.

As these changes come into force in each country, failure to implement the listed updates may cause inaccurate date and time which could lead to unpredictable results, depending upon usage.

New Zealand/Mongolia 2007

BugID CR 6542933: update zoneinfo timezones to 2007f (Mongolia, New Zealand, Indiana, etc)

February 8, 2007 - Mongolia has chosen not to move to Summer Time (Daylight Saving Time) commencing 2007. Previously, each year the clock advanced one hour earlier during the summer.

March 11, 2007 - Pulaski County, Indiana, is switching from CST/CDT to EST/EDT which means a 2-hour change on March 11 2007. This requires a new Zone: America/Indiana/Winamac.

April 30, 2007 - New Zealand has decided to extend the daylight savings period to 27 weeks. Clocks will go forward an hour a week earlier than usual - on the last Sunday in September - and back an hour on the first Sunday in April instead of the third Sunday in March. Daylight saving for 2007-08 will start at 2a.m. on 30 September 2007 and end at 3a.m. on 6 April 2008.

BugID CR 6597032: Update zoneinfo timezones to 2007g (South Australia, Indiana, Egypt)

Egypt has changed the ending date of DST. DST ended on September 7 in 2007.

Daviess, Dubous, Knox, Martin, and Pike Counties, Indiana, switch from central to eastern time in November. This results in a zone split, and a new entry America/Tell_City is created for Perry County, which does not switch zones in November.

South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, and New South Wales are changing their DST rules effective in 2008. DST will end the first Sunday in April at 03:00 and start the first Sunday in October at 03:00.  Lord Howe Island has a similar change.

BugID CR 6606060: Update zoneinfo timezones 2007h (Brazil, Egypt, Iran, Gaza, Venezuela)

Brazil observes DST from 2007-10-14 00:00 to 2008-02-17 00:00.

Iran will resume DST from 2008.

Venezuela is currently planning to change time zones on January 1 2008, to 04:30.

BugID CR 6636785: Update zoneinfo timezones to 2007j (Venezuela, Cuba, Syria)

Venezuela had decided to change their clocks on December 9 at 03:00, instead of January 1 at 00:00 as first thought.

Cuba will end DST one week earlier - on the last Sunday of October.

Syria winter local time will be observed at midnight on Thursday November 1 2007, and the clocks will be put back 1 hour.

BugID CR 6645893: Update zoneinfo timezones to 2007k (Argentina, Jan Mayen)

Argentina re-adoption of daylight saving time to commence at the start of the day Sunday December 30, and finishing at the start of the day Sunday March 16.

Contributing Factors

These issues can occur in the following releases:

SPARC Platform:

• Solaris 8 without patch 109809-08
• Solaris 9 without patch 113225-10
• Solaris 10 without patch 125378-03

x86 Platform:

• Solaris 8 without patch 109810-08
• Solaris 9 without patch 116545-08
• Solaris 10 without patch 125379-03

Symptoms

Users will experience incorrect system time or date after timezone changes go into effect.

Workaround

There is no easy way to avoid these issues. Attempts to change the TOD clock of the system are temporary and will not resolve all the time zone issues resolved by these patches. It is advised that the patches are installed to resolve the time zone changes.

Binary relief is available through normal support channels for BugID 6645893: Update zoneinfo timezones to 2007k (Argentina, Jan Mayen).

Note: This relief does not include complete relief of the timezone definition for 2007k, it only includes 2007h plus the Argentina change.

Resolution

These issues are addressed in the following releases:

SPARC Platform:

• Solaris 8 with patch 109809-08 or later
• Solaris 9 with patch 113225-10 or later
• Solaris 10 with patch 125378-03 or later

x86 Platform:

• Solaris 8 with patch 109810-08 or later
• Solaris 9 with patch 116545-08 or later
• Solaris 10 with patch 125379-03 or later

The patches listed above do not include the changes for BugIDs 6636785 and 6645893.

Note 1: Once these patches are applied, at(1) jobs may not be scheduled correctly.

This will happen if both the following conditions are met:

1. at(1) jobs have been submitted before patch installation.

2. Those jobs will be executed during the extended DST periods.

at(1) jobs which meet these two conditions can be scheduled one hour later or earlier. Please run atq(1) to see if jobs are scheduled correctly after patch installation.

If there are discrepancies, remove jobs using atrm(1) and resubmit the jobs.

Note 2: Once these patches are applied and the system rebooted, to complete the installation of these changes, systems which are running CDE calendar manager [dtcm(1)] or the CDE calendar server daemon [rpc.cmsd] will find that some scheduled events in the extended/changed DST period are incorrect by one hour.

This will happen if the following conditions are met:

1. Events were created before DST patch installation and reboot.

2. Those events were created while the CDE calendar manager was using a time zone which has been impacted by the changes described by this Sun Alert.

3. Those events were single events scheduled for dates in the extended/changed DST periods, or those events were recurring events for which the first instance of the event is in the extended/changed DST period.

To address this issue, recreate all single events in the affected time period and all recurring events for which the first instance of the event is in the affected time period.

Note 3: Those systems which are not in one of the affected timezones and not using any programs which switch to using one of the affected timezones will not need these patches.

Note 4:  Information on previous daylight saving and timezone changes for Solaris can be found at:

http://sunsolve.sun.com/search/document.do?assetkey=1-26-102775-1

Note 5:   Daylight saving and timezone information on other Sun products can be found at:

    http://sun.com/dst

Modification History


Date: 18-OCT-2007

• Updated Contributing Factors and Resolution sections

Date: 28-NOV-2007

• Updated Impact, Contributing Factors and Resolution sections

Date: 28-DEC-2007

• Updated BugID field, Impact, and Relief/Workaround sections

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