Argentina's (no) daylight savings time
Mariano Absatz
baby at baby.com.ar
Mon Apr 16 22:30:47 UTC 2001
Hi,
Im new to the list so forgive me if this has already been discused.
I administer a bunch of Solaris and Linux (RedHat 6.x/7.x) machines and a
month or so ago, all of the Linuxes went one hour early...
It was quite clear that it was related to a timezone problem... the
problem was I never quite understood the format of the zoneinfo files...
anyway, I got the latest files from ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/ to try
to solve the problem, but it didn't work...
I just saw that there is another release (2001b), but the bug is still
there...
I edited the southamerica file by hand not exactly knowing what I'm
doing, but I kinda fixed it.
The point is that as far as I remember, in the last 3 or 4 years, DST was
not used (there were a few decrees and I think there was a failed
national survey, but eventually, DST was not applied).
Anyway, the "least damage" editing I could think of (not fully
understanding the zoneinfo file logic) was deleting all the zone data
regarding the year 2000 rule for all Argentine cities in the file
(Buenos_Aires, Rosario, Cordoba, Jujuy, Catamarca and Mendoza).
It worked, though I ain't quite sure if it will go wrong in October...
Probably, the rule itself should be erased, though I didn't do it...
Is there a somehow concise explanation of the format of the zoneinfo
files, other than the comments in the file itself?... in fact, I only
checked the southamerica file, maybe there is another one with a better
explanation...
I actually don't have the laws, decrees and/or Supreme Court roulings
regarding DST to justify what I am doing, but I DO know what time is it
now :-) (and the fact that it's 3 hours west from GMT, and that I didn't
change to DST for more than a couple of years).
If I get to understand the format and relationship betwenn Rules and
Zones I can correct the Rules/Zones for the couple of last years... I
actually don't have previous data, and given the conflicts DST generated
the last time it was used (I can't even remember when that was) I don't
think there IS a knowledgable source for the past, other than what was
put in there by other people in the past.
TIA.
If you are interested this is the diff output:
=================================================================
# diff southamerica.wrong southamerica.better
137d136
< -4:00 Arg AR%sT 2000 Mar 3 0:00
148d146
< -4:00 Arg AR%sT 2000 Mar 3 0:00
159d156
< -4:00 Arg AR%sT 2000 Mar 3 0:00
172d168
< -4:00 Arg AR%sT 2000 Mar 3 0:00
184d179
< -4:00 Arg AR%sT 2000 Mar 3 0:00
197d191
< -4:00 Arg AR%sT 2000 Mar 3 0:00
=================================================================
--
Mariano Absatz
baby at baby.com.ar
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