2007 Daylight Savings Time changes and FreeBSD

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Starting in 2007, the dates that daylight savings time begins and ends is changing in the US and other countries. For FreeBSD it seems versions 6.2 and higher should already know about the new DST dates. A machine can be checked with

zdump -v /etc/localtime | grep 2007

A machine with the old DST settings will show lines that begin with:

/etc/localtime  Sun Apr  1 07:59:59 2007 
/etc/localtime  Sun Apr  1 08:00:00 2007 
/etc/localtime  Sun Oct 28 06:59:59 2007 
/etc/localtime  Sun Oct 28 07:00:00 2007

which is wrong, (April 1st and Oct 28th). A machine that's correct should show:

/etc/localtime  Sun Mar 11 07:59:59 2007 
/etc/localtime  Sun Mar 11 08:00:00 2007 
/etc/localtime  Sun Nov  4 06:59:59 2007 
/etc/localtime  Sun Nov  4 07:00:00 2007

March 11th and Nov 4th being the new days that DST switches.

Updating a FreeBSD box seems to be just a matter in installing the misc/zoneinfo port, and then running the tzsetup command which gives you menus to pick your timezone again.

this blog has links for info on updating other OSes.