RedHat Release 9 and Daylight Savings Time (DST)
 

Looking for an rpm or some file update to get a Redhat Release 9 system set for the new Daylight Savings Time (DST) settings taking effect 3/11/06. Any ideas? Thank you.

Yes download the source file tzdata2007a.tar.gz from ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/, extract and then use 'zic' to create an appropriate new zoneinfo file(s) directly.

For the details see; man zic

Is there a reason why you are using Redhat 9? This has been unsupported since May 2004. The "free" Redhat distros have been superceded by the Fedora Project, the latest release is Core 6.

I strongly recommend that you upgrade to Fedora Core 6, which is much better supported, and has newer versions of most programs.

Under FC6, the system update tool should already have an updated "tzdata" package when you apply the updates. This should take care of the DST issue.

--Ian

Thanks for the info.

Long story as to why it is still RedHat R9...Thanks for the info

I have several Redhat 9 systems too. I used the info from Lenard. But the process ended up being VERY VERY easy once I figued out what to do. If you download those .gz files you will have a folder with the new timezone files in them. I'm in CST6CDT. All I did was copied the CST6CDT file to /usr/share/zoneinfo on my Redhat 9 system and the reran the redhat-config-date program. It updated the timezone and to the new daylight savings time settings. If you run

zdump -v /etc/localtime | grep 2007

it will show you when DST is going to start and stop on a system. Run it before and then after to verify that my method worked. It took me several hours to come upon this idea based on other things I read and tried including compiling those programs Lenard referenced. There was no need to compile. Good luck.

Jesse

Hi, All,

I try to download the source file tzdata2007a.tar.gz from ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/ to my XP computer first. Then, I will copy the file to my Redhat 9 Linux computer. But it doesn't work. What I do is that I typed ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub in IE. Then, it shows me that "Internet Explorer cannot Display the webpage".

Is anybody know if the source file still can download? Or, do I do some wrong? Could anybody tell me how to download the source file? Thanks a lot.

--qq

The file can still be download, try a different browser; http://www.firefox.com/

Or click on the links you just posted twice in your query, or use this one; ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/tzdata2007c.tar.gz

complete steps
 

Thanks for all the info above!
I summarized here the complete procedure for my system (RH9), hopefully it can save some time for someone else.

# as root:

# check the old time zone info
zdump -v /etc/localtime | grep 2007
# shows:
#/etc/localtime Sun Apr 1 09:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Apr 1 01:59:59 2007 PST isdst=0 gmtoff=-28800
#/etc/localtime Sun Apr 1 10:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Apr 1 03:00:00 2007 PDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-25200
#/etc/localtime Sun Oct 28 08:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Oct 28 01:59:59 2007 PDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-25200
#/etc/localtime Sun Oct 28 09:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Oct 28 01:00:00 2007 PST isdst=0 gmtoff=-28800

service ntpd stop

# use a tmp directory
mkdir -p tzone ; cd tzone

# get the new timezone info
wget ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/tzdata2007c.tar.gz
tar xzf tzdata2007c.tar.gz

# adjust the system's zoneinfo
zic -d /usr/share/zoneinfo/ northamerica

# re-run redhat date config tool
redhat-config-date
# just confirm my timezone is America/Los-Angeles Pacific Time

# check that the change has taken place
zdump -v /etc/localtime | grep 2007
# shows (to my satisfaction):
#/etc/localtime Sun Mar 11 09:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Mar 11 01:59:59 2007 PST isdst=0 gmtoff=-28800
#/etc/localtime Sun Mar 11 10:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Mar 11 03:00:00 2007 PDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-25200
#/etc/localtime Sun Nov 4 08:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Nov 4 01:59:59 2007 PDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-25200
#/etc/localtime Sun Nov 4 09:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Nov 4 01:00:00 2007 PST isdst=0 gmtoff=-28800

# force ntp to adjust the clock, even if there was a large gap:
ntpdate clock.redhat.com

# make sure ntpd will be restarted after reboot
chkconfig ntpd on

# restart ntpd now
service ntpd start

worked on rh9
 

Thanks pierred. Those were excellent...instructions I can follow. Worked great. Use a browser to check the ftp...above and fetch the file named similar...they update names. Today it was: tzdata2008i.tar.gz
Thanks

pierred, your info worked fine for the 2009 tz files too. Thanks for the post. It saved me a lot of time!