Solaris 2.6 and daylight savings

[spamly]

As most of you probably know, the US is changing from the standard daylight savings time next year.

I was able to find the following statement and patches for Solaris 8, 9, and 10:

http://sunsolve.sun.com/search/document.do?assetkey=1-26-102178-1

Unfortunately, I can't find an updated patch for Solaris 2.6. The closest I can find is 109772-01, but that isn't going to help me. As Solaris 2.6 is no longer supported, I'm not really that surprised. I do, however, have a critical application that still requires this version of Solaris.

How are you handling this? I assume that I'll just have to change the time manually. What if I have an NTP client on these servers? Will this further ball up the situation?

Thanks in advance!

-Tim

 

[daFranze]

no, ntp will _not_ fix the situation, since every date command you or your application calls is just a conversion from the UNIX time (seconds since "epoch" Jan 1st 1970 GMT). ntp will just monitor the drift from your machine time to the reference time from the time server and will adjust the local UNIX time. Wether your local time (human readable format) is a DST or not is defined in the timezone files.

I suggest
1 - have a look at the timezonefiles in your Solaris 8, 9, 10 environment - unfortunately I just have some hpux boxes I cannot have a look for you - I'm pretty sure the syntax did not change from Sola 2.6 to 8. So I suggest ether to copy the whole timezone file for your TZ or the whole tree or just find out which lines changed since your file release
2 - since 2.6 and 7 are not supported OS releases I suggest to ask the application vendor to show an upgrade path to SunOS 5.9 or 5.10. If it is really a critical application you need to run it in supported environment.

Best Regards, Franz
--
UNIX System Manager from Munich, Germany

 

[spamly]

Thanks for the feedback. I've never had to play with a timezone file. Wish me luck.

As for the upgrade, the vendor asked our company to upgrade the application and OS years ago, but my company won't dedicate the resources to it. It's out of my control. Sigh...

 

[spamly]

I've found this online. Initial tests look good!

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. 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.