Anil Gangolli

Check your linux timezone updates

I was feeling comfortable that I had up-to-date tzdata installed on my linux box

rpm -q -i tzdata

showed I was running

tzdata-2005r-3.fc3

So, good; I've got the 2007 rules.

Not so fast!

zdump -v /etc/localtime | grep 2007

gave a transition time in April still. What's up?

It turned out that the rpm update had left /etc/localtime untouched and created /etc/localtime.rpmnew. When I moved that into place, it gave the right March transition, but it was timezone info for the Eastern US time zone.

I ended up having to copy my local America/Los_Angeles zone data manually from /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Los_Angeles to /etc/localtime and then reboot.

This seems to have done the trick. I'm not sure how my tzdata installation went astray originally, but you may want to check boxes you have.

Posted at 12:27AM Feb 22, 2007 in System.out  |  Permalink