Translation(s): English - Português (Brasil)


Sometimes you need to change the timezone files to cope with changes to your local legal environment, such as:

Background: Debian includes timezone files in the /usr/share/zoneinfo directory tree, which is provided by the tzdata package for Etch and later. (For Sarge and earlier the files are part of the libc6). These packages may be updated from time to time:

To make a change ahead of the change being made by the Debian project, follow this process:

More details can be found below, using Sydney Australia as the example. Substitute the timezone name and the file name for your local environment.

Check Configured Timezone

To see or change what timezone your Debian system is configured for,

# dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

What does this do? It changes the /etc/localtime symbolic link and the /etc/timezone file. It is not enough to run for example timedatectl set-timezone Australia/Sydney since it does not update the /etc/timezone Debian-specific file used by some packages. Background information follows.

Consider the localtime(5) link as the primary source and /etc/timezone as a legacy. During Bookworm release cycle there was an attempt to get rid of /etc/timezone (822733), but it was restored for a while since there is a number of packages still relying on it (1031395).

In Debian releases Sarge (3.1) and earlier, /etc/localtime was a symbolic link. It was changed to a regular file (a copy of a /usr/share/zoneinfo/ file) in Etch (4.0), and remained so until Stretch (9), at which time it was made a symbolic link again.

In Debian releases between Etch and Jessie (inclusive), /etc/localtime is a copy of the original data file, which makes it difficult to tell which timezone is selected. Check the contents of /etc/timezone to see the name of the timezone. If the system is configured normally, you should find that the zoneinfo file referenced by this name is identical to /etc/localtime. For example, you can verify this by running:

$ diff -s /etc/localtime /usr/share/zoneinfo/`cat /etc/timezone`
Files /etc/localtime and /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/New_York are identical

The tzconfig command updates both /etc/localtime and /etc/timezone.

In releases Stretch and later, /etc/localtime is a link to a file. Check where /etc/localtime links to:

# ls -l /etc/localtime
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root           48 Mar 31 11:19 /etc/localtime -> /usr/share/zoneinfo/Australia/Sydney

Check If Needed

The zdump program dumps the timezone table. Use it to check the dates for the daylight savings change. For example this system has old Australian rules, showing a change from daylight saving on 26th March:

# zdump -c 2007 -v Australia/Sydney|grep 2006
Australia/Sydney  Sat Mar 25 15:59:59 2006 UTC = Sun Mar 26 02:59:59 2006 EST isdst=1 gmtoff=39600
Australia/Sydney  Sat Mar 25 16:00:00 2006 UTC = Sun Mar 26 02:00:00 2006 EST isdst=0 gmtoff=36000
Australia/Sydney  Sat Oct 28 15:59:59 2006 UTC = Sun Oct 29 01:59:59 2006 EST isdst=0 gmtoff=36000
Australia/Sydney  Sat Oct 28 16:00:00 2006 UTC = Sun Oct 29 03:00:00 2006 EST isdst=1 gmtoff=39600

Get Timezone File

Obtain a copy of the australasia or country-specific timezone file from a recent tzdata package, or from the upstream site.

To get the australasia file from the tzdata sources, configure your sources.list with deb-src lines for your current distribution version, fetch the source, unpack it, and then edit the file. For example on a system tracking Lenny (version numbers may vary):

# mkdir /tmp/tzdata
# cd /tmp/tzdata
# apt-get install dpkg-dev
# apt-get source tzdata
# cd tzdata-2008e
# tar xfz tzdata2008e.tar.gz
# more australasia

To bypass Debian and get the files from where the Debian project got them from:

% mkdir /tmp/tzdata
% cd /tmp/tzdata
% wget 'ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/tzdata*.tar.gz'
% tar xfz tzdata*.tar.gz
% more australasia

You should now have all the timezone files.

If you are using the file from the source package without the change, then change the file adding the new lines. For example these lines are in the corrected file for the early 2006 change in australasia:

...
Rule    AN      2001    max     -       Oct     lastSun 2:00s   1:00    -
Rule    AN      2006    only    -       Apr     Sun>=1  2:00s   0       -
Rule    AN      2007    max     -       Mar     lastSun 2:00s   0       -
...

Pretest Change

This is an optional step. It tests the source file without changing the system configuration. It can be done as an ordinary user.

$ mkdir test-tz
$ /usr/sbin/zic -d test-tz australasia
$ TZ=`pwd`/test-tz/Australia/Sydney date --date="2006-04-01 16:00:10 UTC"
Sun Apr  2 02:00:10 EST 2006

This test works by compiling the timezone source file into a directory, then asking the date command to test translating a UTC time into localtime near the expected discontinuity.

Commit Change

The zic program changes the timezone table. Give it the name of the australasia or country-specific source file you changed. For example:

# /usr/sbin/zic australasia

Then reconfigure the tzdata package, which will update /etc/localtime:

# dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

Verification Test 1: Dump Timezone Rules

Use the zdump program again to confirm the change. For example this system has the change properly applied, showing a change from daylight saving on 2nd April:

# zdump -c 2007 -v Australia/Sydney|grep 2006
Australia/Sydney  Sat Apr  1 15:59:59 2006 UTC = Sun Apr  2 02:59:59 2006 EST isdst=1 gmtoff=39600
Australia/Sydney  Sat Apr  1 16:00:00 2006 UTC = Sun Apr  2 02:00:00 2006 EST isdst=0 gmtoff=36000
Australia/Sydney  Sat Oct 28 15:59:59 2006 UTC = Sun Oct 29 01:59:59 2006 EST isdst=0 gmtoff=36000
Australia/Sydney  Sat Oct 28 16:00:00 2006 UTC = Sun Oct 29 03:00:00 2006 EST isdst=1 gmtoff=39600

Verification Test 2: Translate a UTC Time

You can use the --date option to the date command see how the system will interpret a particular time. This method does not change the system clock.

$ date --date="2006-04-01 15:59:50 utc"
Sun Apr  2 02:59:50 EST 2006
$ date --date="2006-04-01 16:00:10 utc"
Sun Apr  2 02:00:10 EST 2006

Verification Test 3: Observe Rollover

It is possible to change your system's time so as to demonstrate the fix is good. There are side-effects of changing the time, such as distortion of file dates, or interoperability problems with other systems nearby, so it's only a good idea on a test system.

To do the test, use the date --utc command to change the time to just before the first discontinuity identified by zdump, then use the date command to show the local time, over the discontinuity. For example:

# date --utc 040115592006.50 ; date ; sleep 20 ; date
Sun Apr  2 02:59:50 EST 2006
Sun Apr  2 02:00:10 EST 2006

Test Failure Scenarios

Restarting Daemons and Long-Running Programs

After the zoneinfo files are updated, you may need to restart daemons and other long-running programs to get them to use the new zone information. Examples of such programs include apache, bind, cron, fetchmail -d, inetd, mailman, sendmail, and sysklogd. A common symptom of this problem is seeing incorrect timestamps mixed in with the correct timestamps in your log files (e.g. /var/log/syslog). Even interactive programs like "mutt" may continue to use the old timezone information until they are restarted.

Binary Portability

The compiled zoneinfo file appears to be platform and architecture independent, so if you have multiple machines to update you should be able to move the file as-is without running zic again. Similarly, you can just pull updated zoneinfo files from a machine running a different Debian release, or even download the latest tzdata package from unstable, extract the zoneinfo files from within the .deb file, and install them into the /usr/share/zoneinfo directory tree.

References


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