Terry Tyson’s Blog

Back in 2005 congress approved changing the start and end dates for Daylight Saving Time (DST). That change goes into effect this year. Therefore, computers should be patched before March 11 (when the change takes place). Recently, I patched my firewall, web server, and laptop. The following is the zdump output before and after the patch.

# zdump -v /etc/localtime | grep 2007
/etc/localtime  Sun Apr  1 07:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Apr  1 01:59:59 2007 CST isdst=0
/etc/localtime  Sun Apr  1 08:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Apr  1 03:00:00 2007 CDT isdst=1
/etc/localtime  Sun Oct 28 06:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Oct 28 01:59:59 2007 CDT isdst=1
/etc/localtime  Sun Oct 28 07:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Oct 28 01:00:00 2007 CST isdst=0

patch applied

# zdump -v /etc/localtime | grep 2007
/etc/localtime  Sun Mar 11 07:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Mar 11 01:59:59 2007 CST isdst=0
/etc/localtime  Sun Mar 11 08:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Mar 11 03:00:00 2007 CDT isdst=1
/etc/localtime  Sun Nov  4 06:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Nov  4 01:59:59 2007 CDT isdst=1
/etc/localtime  Sun Nov  4 07:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Nov  4 01:00:00 2007 CST isdst=0

For most home users, not patching their computers will not have any life shattering effects. In the corporate world, however, not patching servers can shut a business down. I have a friend who works in a datacenter. Most of their servers run Oracle databases on the Solaris operating system. They handle thousands of transactions per second and not properly patching these servers can wreak havoc.

Even on a home system it’s a good idea to patch properly. If you use a UNIX like operating system, you probably already know how to patch. If you use Windows, it’s easy enough to use Windows Update to keep your computer up to date.