How do I ensure my RHEL system handles Chile's extended Daylight Saving Time in 2014?

Solution Verified - Updated -

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) all versions
  • tzdata

Issue

  • Chile's government has announced a change in DST for the year 2014.
  • Given the sensitivity of the system date in many environments, can we be sure our Red Hat systems will handle the change transparently and correctly?

Resolution

An official announcement has been made regarding this issue on February 19th 2014. Also, Chile's official webpage for the DST change has been updated.

Based on the official webpage and announcements, current tzdata packages (tzdata-2013i-2.el6.noarch) have the proper information regarding the DST changes:

# zdump -v 'America/Santiago'|grep 2014
America/Santiago  Sun Apr 27 02:59:59 2014 UTC = Sat Apr 26 23:59:59 2014 CLST isdst=1 gmtoff=-10800
America/Santiago  Sun Apr 27 03:00:00 2014 UTC = Sat Apr 26 23:00:00 2014 CLT isdst=0 gmtoff=-14400
America/Santiago  Sun Sep  7 03:59:59 2014 UTC = Sat Sep  6 23:59:59 2014 CLT isdst=0 gmtoff=-14400
America/Santiago  Sun Sep  7 04:00:00 2014 UTC = Sun Sep  7 01:00:00 2014 CLST isdst=1 gmtoff=-10800
# zdump -v 'Chile/EasterIsland'|grep 2014
Chile/EasterIsland  Sun Apr 27 02:59:59 2014 UTC = Sat Apr 26 21:59:59 2014 EASST isdst=1 gmtoff=-18000
Chile/EasterIsland  Sun Apr 27 03:00:00 2014 UTC = Sat Apr 26 21:00:00 2014 EAST isdst=0 gmtoff=-21600
Chile/EasterIsland  Sun Sep  7 03:59:59 2014 UTC = Sat Sep  6 21:59:59 2014 EAST isdst=0 gmtoff=-21600
Chile/EasterIsland  Sun Sep  7 04:00:00 2014 UTC = Sat Sep  6 23:00:00 2014 EASST isdst=1 gmtoff=-18000

For any further information on this issue, please contact Technical Support.

Root Cause

Chile has changed the DST dates for the year 2014.

Diagnostic Steps

  1. Check the Daylight Savings Time start (and end) times.
    When the system's tzdata package has outdated information, the time change for Chile/EasterIsland will happen on March instead of April.

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