Western Australian Daylight Savings changes

[Kevin Kinsey]

Dean Hollister wrote:
> 
> Dear All,
> 
> To confuse things even more, Western Australia is starting daylight 
> saving for a 3 year trial. The start/stop dates are not uniform, just to 
> make life harder. The dates are as follows:
> 
> First on:    2:00am Dec 3
> 2007-2008:    2:00am Oct lastSun (ON)
> 2007-2009:    2:00am Mar lastSun (OFF)
> 
> If I've got the zoneinfo rules right, they go something like (sorry if 
> field formatting doesn't come out properly):
> 
> 
> # Western Australia
> Zone Australia/Perth     7:43:24 -      LMT     1895 Dec
>                          8:00   Aus     WST     1943 Jul
>                          8:00   -       WST     1974 Oct lastSun 2:00s
>                          8:00   1:00    WST     1975 Mar Sun>=1 2:00s
>                          8:00   -       WST     1983 Oct lastSun 2:00s
>                          8:00   1:00    WST     1984 Mar Sun>=1 2:00s
>                          8:00   -       WST     1991 Nov 17 2:00s
>                          8:00   1:00    WST     1992 Mar Sun>=1 2:00s
>                          8:00   -       WST     2006 Dec 2
>                          8:00   AW      WST     2009 Mar lastSun 2:00s
>                          8:00   -       WST
> 
> # Rule  NAME    FROM    TO      TYPE    IN      ON      AT      SAVE 
> LETTER/S
> Rule    AW      2006    only    -       Dec     3       2:00s   1:00    -
> Rule    AW      2007    2008    -       Oct     lastSun 2:00s   1:00    -
> Rule    AW      2007    2009    -       Mar     lastSun 2:00s   0       -
> 
> Has anything at this stage been committed to the -STABLE branches for 
> these changes, or will most need to do them manually?
> 

There has been a lot of discussion on the list lately about this, as a 
great portion of the world is going to DST this weekend, much earlier 
than the previous "norm".  You might glean some insight from the mail 
archives.

Here are some other (my non-authoritative) thoughts.

1.  If your system is >=6.2, it's possible that the updated zone files 
are already installed.  Most of the rest of the world's changes were, 
anyhow.

2.  One way to test is to run `date -v +Nd`, where N is the number of 
days until the change.  If date returns the wrong zone indicator (in my 
case it was CST instead of CDT), then run `tzsetup` as root and try again.

3.  If it still returns the wrong indicator, install 
/usr/ports/misc/zoneinfo from an up-to-date ports tree, run tzsetup, and 
try again.


> The gazetted changes/references are at:
> 
> http://wa.gov.au/daylightsaving/
> 

It might be worth mentioning that just having 6.2 installed may not be 
enough; if the system was upgraded from a lower version, you may still 
need to run tzsetup to get ready for DST.  This took me by surprise 
yesterday; fortunately, no biggie as I have only a few 
servers/workstations running FreeBSD.

HTH,

Kevin Kinsey