[tz] Antarctica/Troll time

[Brian Inglis]

On 2019-11-17 09:40, Paul Eggert wrote:
> On 11/16/19 10:42 PM, Phake Nick wrote:
>> some rules for Antarctica/Troll have been commented out, with the
>> description of it saying "uncomment them when 2014b is more prevalent". Is
>> it still not prevalent enough to uncomment them now?

> Let's wait another year at least. RHEL 6.10 still uses older zic and is
> supported through 2020-11-30. There may be other operating systems that have
> similar issues.

That's kinda scary orgs may still be running 10 year old software (and hardware,
but more likely only in VMs) with only minor updates, given the info below,
summarized from RH sources. I was shocked how old some of the package releases
were even on newer versions I used.

RH info about tzdata releases:

https://access.redhat.com/articles/1187353
https://developers.redhat.com/blog/author/patsyfranklin/
https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2019/02/22/time-zone-data-tzdata-2018-data-format-changes-and-red-hat-enterprise-linux/

"As such, the RHEL tzdata package is currently shipping with the rearguard
format to allow time for our data format consumers to update their parsers to
the newer format."

Given RH is shipping rearguard to customers with any support, it appears you
could update the sources, as long as you provide any necessary additional
protections in rearguard.

[FYI:

There are a lot of hand waving weasel words around support information on RH
site which appears to be written by lawyers or someone who can not provide
information clearly. They advise contracting RH Consulting so they can determine
your support needs. MS is a model of clarity by comparison about EoL.

Extended Life Phase ELS - no bug fixes, security fixes, hardware enablement or
root-cause analysis, on existing installations only. ELS add on support
subscription provides tzdata updates.

Extended Update Support EUS - RH-defined Critical and Important impact security
(Important CVEs) and selected (at Red Hat discretion) Urgent Priority bug fixes
available for a specific minor release in parallel to subsequent minor releases,
for selected platforms and packages: included with x86-64 Server Premium
subscriptions, available for x86-64 Server Standard, and for RHEL 8 IBM Power LE
and IBM System z subscriptions.

Maintenance Support/1/2 seems to be the period during which you may subscribe to
EUS on a supported release after Full Support ends, RH may provide a
discretionary minor update, or tell you to migrate to fix a problem:

Version	FS ended	MS1 ends	MS2 ends
6	May 10, 2016	May 10, 2017	November 30, 2020
7	August 6, 2019	August 6, 2020	June 30, 2024

"The only RHEL6 channels receiving updates are the base channel, and 6.7 EUS
until December 31 2018. There is no EUS for 6.8 onwards."
This implies there are no updates being produced for RHEL 6. What I was able to
find implies no kernel fixes since mid-2018. I was surprised how many CVEs have
been found since then which apply to that release. Possibly if enough customers
complain about a problem, they will look at backporting a patch or minor update.
EUS seems to be "support" to avoid migrating to newer releases, and for
performing a migration, but for little value.

RH also offers Advanced Mission Critical Update Support AUS for certain
releases, details of which are available only to RH support customers.

In RHEL 7, EUS is available for the following releases, and no longer available
for earlier releases:

7.5 released April 10, 2018	ends April 30, 2020
7.6 released October 30, 2018	ends October 31, 2020
7.7 released August 6, 2019	ends August 30, 2021

In RHEL 8, EUS is planned for RHEL 8.1, 8.2, 8.4, 8.6, and 8.8:

8.1 release November 30, 2019	ends November 30, 2021
8.2 release May 31, 2020	ends May 31, 2022
8.4 release May 31, 2021	ends May 31, 2023
8.6 release May 31, 2022	ends May 31, 2024
8.8 release May 31, 2023	ends May 31, 2025]

-- 
Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

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