For whom the bells tolls (6)

Yesterday spent practically the whole day changing and getting things ready for the upcoming TZ Change on Venezuela's servers from work.
As usual, they informed really, really late about this whole thing...
Deja vu... Once again? Yes...

Updates dujour

Installed these, no problems at all, at least so far :D
The tzdata one I'm pretty sure it has to do with the Daylight Saving Time that never was.
Stupid government, stupid people.

2009-10-16 12:06:37 status installed libsndfile1 1.0.17-4ubuntu1.1
2009-10-16 12:06:38 status installed libc6 2.9-4ubuntu6.1
2009-10-17 18:19:04 status installed tzdata 2009n-0ubuntu0.9.04.1
2009-10-17 18:19:05 status installed tzdata-java 2009n-0ubuntu0.9.04.1

Tiger ntpd configuration

Right after you have finished setting up your Tiger's ipfw firewall, stop by the NTPD Pool Project page, and pickup a group of those near to wherever you are.
Stop your ntpd daemon, like this:

% sudo /System/Library/StartupItems/NetworkTime/NetworkTime stop

Then, edit the file '/private/etc/ntp.conf', and add those, the file has to end like this:

server 0.south-america.pool.ntp.org prefer iburst minpoll 12 maxpoll 15
server 1.south-america.pool.ntp.org minpoll 12 maxpoll 15
server 2.south-america.pool.ntp.org minpoll 12 maxpoll 15
server 3.south-america.pool.ntp.org minpoll 12 maxpoll 15
server time.apple.com minpoll 12 maxpoll 15
server clock.via.net minpoll 12 maxpoll 15

And then, start the daemon once again, it will print a message while connecting to the remote ntpd servers:

% sudo /System/Library/StartupItems/NetworkTime/NetworkTime start
Starting network time synchronization
Looking for host 0.south-america.pool.ntp.org and service ntp
host found : imp-254.topgroup.com.ar
Looking for host 1.south-america.pool.ntp.org and service ntp
host found : c8daab2b.maxiweb.com.br
Looking for host 2.south-america.pool.ntp.org and service ntp
host found : titan.cais.rnp.br
Looking for host 3.south-america.pool.ntp.org and service ntp
host found : mail.wholenet.com.ar
Looking for host time.apple.com and service ntp
host found : time7.apple.com
Looking for host clock.via.net and service ntp
host found : clock.via.net

Let it run a couple of minutes, and then query it, like this:

% ntpq -np
     remote           refid      st t when poll reach   delay   offset  jitter
==============================================================================
 200.218.171.44  .INIT.          16 u    -  68m    0    0.000    0.000 4000.00
 146.164.48.5    .GPS.            1 u  136  68m    1  324.722   -3.956   0.001
 64.209.30.130   128.2.1.22       3 u  135  68m    1  239.466    9.647   0.001
 200.80.32.170   91.189.94.4      3 u  134  68m    1   10.275  -12.162   0.001
 17.151.16.23    17.254.0.49      2 u  133  68m    1  219.404   -6.055   0.001
 209.81.9.7      .GPS.            1 u  132  68m    1  230.757   -0.375   0.001

An amazing Sunday

The temperature took a nose dive Saturday night, it was something really impressive.

Besides that, we had our change to Winter time, the TZ Data change once again, this time, we got back the hour we lost on October last year.

The days are getting shorter, the temperature starts to drop somehow, life is good.

Apple get your sh*t together & on time

I really don't understand why Apple gives a real flying fuck about the time zone changes South of the Rio Grande.
Of the four different times displayed on the Widgets, the only correct is the one for Miami (and the one on Buenos Aires is working because I have disabled the time sync via ntpd), all the others are showing incorrect times.

I guess we are not that important on the whole picture, but nevertheless, how complicated can be to release updates for this?

Apple, get you sh*t together, man

Of course -and to be honest, I was sort of expecting this- Apple simply gave a flying f*ck about the TZ Data update here on Argentina.

No, I don't mean the one we had last year, but the one we had today, October the 19th 2008.
Last year Apple had the excuse that the joke we have as government announced the change just a couple of days before doing it (real smart indeed), but this year Apple does not have an excuse, and specially so if you think that we even had a dress rehearsal (or something like that, it was more like a f*ck up actually, but who cares)

Amazing for a company that literally cuts your left ball for its products down here (wel... to be honest, actually, Apple per se has nothing to do with this...), but, you might expect that they will be kind enough of releasing a couple of MBs worth of an update for the folks here in Argentina.

Times they are a-changin'

The TZ Data change went well on all the Ubuntu & CentOS boxes, which was something to be expected actually, I would have been surprised if there were problems, after all we had 10 days of head start, something unbelievable.

TZ change, this time for real

It's official. (Or as official as it can get as of today, given the current state of the world we are living on right now).

I'm sure Apple will not release an update (like it failled to do last year), and, at least, this year the government is giving a 10 day notice, and not effing sh*tt*ng the holidays -the IT people holidays that is- by changing the hour on a December 30th like last year.

Life is good.

- El domingo 19 habrá que adelantar el reloj
- El reloj oficial ya marca la hora de la discordia: polémica por el cambio

The updates have landed

They finally arrived!
Amazing really, if you compare this to Apple's case, in which they didn't produce a single TZ update in more than 3 months, when Argentina changed its hour on December 27th, 2007.

Sort of a forced TZ data change

Not even running Linux...

Last year it was on Os X, and Apple that did not release an effing TZ data fix during the whole duration (some 3 months IIRC), and now, it is on Ubuntu, sort of :D

If you are running Ubuntu, and getting the time via ntpdate, your clock should be one hour ahead now, of course, if you have the bad luck of living in Argentina, that is.

Argentina is 1 hour ahead when it shouldn't
[ubuntu-ar] Cambio de Hora.

For whom the bells tolls (5)

Or rather, back to the future, or the past, er... Whatever, something like that.

The time, the hour, got back to 'normal', meaning that today 12 PM the country's clock got back one hour, like what it was on December 30th. A shame to think that in all this time, Apple didn't even sent an update.. Anyways, it is back to my own time zone, and to sync via ntpd in order to get the clock under control on my Os X boxes (Judith works as my LAN's ntpd server).

Incidentally, all of my work servers that needed to get the change of hour got it automagically -as well as Judith here at home- the marvels of the Open Source I guess :)

This post, although it says posted at 11:28 PM, it is really being posted one hour later :D

For whom the bells tolls (4)

The people at Quadion here in Argentina has released (thru their blog) a (free!) TZ data update to correct the problem with the change of hour from December 30th 2007 ( Link 1 Link 2 ).
I haven't used yet, but it seems to do the work, they also have a Leopard version as well (link).

What I did on Thor, because I wanted to have my clock sync'ed via NTPD once again with Goliath, was to to change the TZ to Uruguay, and then re-enable the automatic sync via System Preferences' "Set date & time automatically".

The only drawback was that on the Terminal, the date included the TZ location as well, so I edited my ~/.profile file like this:

alias date='date "+%a %b %e %H:%M:%S %Y"'

- MAC OS X - HORARIO DE VERANO EN ARGENTINA - AHORA TAMBIÉN PARA TIGER!
- Mac OS X - Horario de verano en Argentina

For whom the bells tolls (3)

I don't get this, how can Apple take so long to release a simple tzdata update?
The hour change took place on December 30th, 2007; and still nothing from the folks at Curpertino. I'm really fed up with not being able to sync my clock via NTPD, and I don't want to use a different TZ to be able to do use an NTPD server.
I mean, come on, even the Linux distributions out there have released the update, yes, after the hour has changed; but nevertheless, the update is here.
Even Microsoft has a page (in Spanish!) regarding this subject: Sepa cómo realizar el cambio de huso horario, it is specially nice to see the section devoted to the IT slaves out there, as usual, Windows makes your life easier & easier: Recomendaciones para Administradores y Usuarios Empresariales

For whom the bells tolls (2)

There is an excellent chronology on how the different Linux distributions managed to get along with the change of hour later on December of 2007.
The post, also, deals on how the so called 'Enterprise' distributions fail miserably to fulfill the expectations.
Once again, I believe it is not all their fault, my government should at least pretend that it gives a damn about planning, and perhaps, it should have been convenient to wait for at least a week since they made de announcement and the actual change to hour.

You can read it here:

Red Hat, clones and tzdata-2007k

For whom the bells tolls

The government will change the hour this 29th at midnight (or 30th at 0 hour) in order to save energy ( link 1, link 2, link 3, link 4 & link 5). This is the second time this year that I have to do this, so, I decided to post here the steps, which are really easy.
Many of the servers don't have internet access, or some of them are really old, besides, the updated tzdata from the vendor usually arrive after the change has taken place, that's why I have decided to write my own tzdata file.

Started by creating this text file. Buenos_Aires2.txt (I use tabs for separators):

Zone America/Argentina/Buenos_Aires2  -3:53:48 - LMT 1894 Oct 31
      -4:16:48 - CMT 1920 May # Cordoba Mean Time
      -4:00  - ART 1930 Dec
      -4:00  - ART 1969 Oct 5
      -3:00  - ART 1999 Oct 3
      -3:00  - ART 2000 Mar 3
      -4:00  - ART 2007 Dec 30
      -3:00  - ART

Then, open the Terminal, and type:

% zic -d tz_change Buenos_Aires2.txt

This will compile the new tzdata file, then, issue:

% sudo cp tz_change/America/Argentina/Buenos_Aires2 /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Argentina/
% cd /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Argentina/
% sudo cp Buenos_Aires Buenos_Aires.ORIG
% sudo mv Buenos_Aires2 Buenos_Aires
% cd /etc
% sudo cp localtime localtime.ORIG
% sudo ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Argentina/Buenos_Aires localtime

Then, you can test the new tzdata, like this:

zdump -v America/Argentina/Buenos_Aires

On the output, you'll see the lines that will make the hour change automagically:

America/Argentina/Buenos_Aires Sun Dec 30 03:59:59 2007 UTC = Sat Dec 29 23:59:59 2007 ART isdst=0
America/Argentina/Buenos_Aires Sun Dec 30 04:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Dec 30 01:00:00 2007 ART isdst=0

At 12 midnight on the 29th, it will forward the hour to 1 AM; which is the change it will be taking place. Of course, you have to change the original text file to the location of your servers, and this does not take into consideration what will happen with the running services on the servers on which you change the hour.