DST Issues

[Dana_Burns]

OK, here goes...

Upon looking for our DST requirements for our ESX servers a while back I went to google and searched for "vmware esx dst" and was refered to:

http://kb.vmware.com/KanisaPlatform/Publishing/224/8695824_f.SAL_Public.html

Here it indicates that VMware ESX Server 3.0.1 and later (build 32039 or later) includes the DST patch in the OS.

I thought "great! free and clean on this one".

However the system did not roll over the time as expected.

I just found that there is a document "6737634" published 3/19/07 ( a week after DST times changed) that indicates DST changes for Canada.

http://kb.vmware.com/vmtnkb/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=6737634&sliceId=SAL_Public...

However the document refers to a patch ESX-3996003. This seems to be only for Brazil and Austrailia.

http://www.vmware.com/support/vi3/doc/esx-3996003-patch.html

How in the heck do I get my esx box to roll over the correct time?

Our support is thorugh IBM and they don't seem to be able to work this out, and as such VMWare direct will not help with this support issue.

Thanks

[formulator]

from service console:

/usr/sbin/zdump -v /etc/localtime | grep 2007

and also:

/usr/sbin/zdump -v /usr/share/zoneinfo/path/to/yourtz | grep 2007

remember to replace "path/to/yourtz" with the path to your tz.

output should be the same and say that DST starts on Mar 11th for 2007. /etc/localtime is your tz choice and is a copy of the correct file for your tz.

I remember when I did the DST patch install it didn't copy the tz file and I had to do it manually on all our hosts.

[mbrkic]

My understanding is that if you are in Canada, the zonefiles have not been pathced yet. The workaround is to use a US timezone that is equivalent to yours. For example, in Toronto, if you use Canada/Eastern the time is still off. However if you set the timezone to America/New_York it is OK.

You can use zdump as formulator suggests (thanks for that tip btw, cool command I did not know about) to find the timezone that is equivalent to yours.

Once you find one you have to do two things:

i) change the ZONE parameter in the /etc/sysconfig/clock file to use the correct timezone. This will set up the timezone correctly on next reboot. In the example of Toronto we make it look like:

ZONE="America/New_York"

ii) copy (or link) the correct zonefile to /etc/localtime. Again in the case of Toronto:

cp -p /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/New_York /etc/localtime

hope this helps.

[formulator]

I'm also in Canada and can confirm that the Canadian zone files were also updated.

[mbrkic]

Do you know which canadian timezones are updated and which patch has those updates?