WA Daylight savings

Hi mcAnthony and welcome to Apple Discussions.

If you have 'Set Time and Date Automatically' selected in System Preferences>Date & Time and a local Time server selected then the time will adjust automatically. No OS updates are necessary. Here in the UK our clocks went back 1 hr a few weeks ago and it just 'happens' with the correct time displaying the next time you log on. (Or you can stay up and watch it happen if you want…)

Have fun,

Adrian

Hi McAnthony,

The original responder to your question pre-supposed that the OS knows there will be daylight savings time in WA. Because this was done with 7 days notice, the OS doesn't know this, and an NTP server won't help, since they only refer to time in GMT.

The recommended solution from Apple in WA is to set your timezone to Osaka, Japan, the night before, and set it back to Perth when DST finishes. Some friends of mine made a patch for the OS, however, it breaks iCal, which for some reason, uses its own timezone settings. If you are interested and don't use iCal, you can get a new timezone file from http://matt.ucc.asn.au/time .. make sure to read the README file.

You'll need to restart after applying it, if you want to test it, and again, it does break iCal. Once you remove it, iCal should be fine again.

Thanks for the clarification Alex, looks like I totally got the wrong end of the stick! (Nothing new there…)

Take care,

Adrian

It's ok 🙂

Not to veer too far, but this DST trial has got to be one of the most stupid things I've seen a government do in.. well.. weeks anyway. They passed the bill authorising it this week, and it starts the week after next.

Changing the timezone is problematic, since you'll need to change it back after the DST trial finishes.

If you don't use iCal, just changing the TZ file should work fine, unless there are applications out there other than iCal that have their own timezones. I haven't tested with Entourage, but am interested to know how it goes.

Even with only 7 days notice, Microsoft has managed to release an update for Windows, although it won't be through Windows Update. Why can't Apple at least do the same? I don't like the idea of having to change my timezone to Japan time.

The info for the times and dates of change over can be found at http://www.mediastatements.wa.gov.au/media/media.nsf/0c079b992e7e607a48256a5a001 6e16b/71c80789277dad4f4825722e000c0569?OpenDocument

Firstly, i can't agree more on how the government has handled this DST Change.
They gave the Sydney olympics 6 months notice for their special DST changes and they still ran into problems. The government gives us a little over a week! What a joke!

Anyway, I would like to see apple release a patch. Microsoft has done this and since we all know apple is far more superior than them, you thik they would be way ahead of the game. Lets hope they have a little surprise for us!

Anyway, until then, looks like my computer is going to think it is is Seoul or Japan.

Hi Folks.

I've written some terminal instructions for those wishing to change their time-zone via the command line.

This is especially useful, if you're looking after multiple users / workstations or servers.

And you can change the time zone back later, via a similar command.

For full details, see my post at:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=750071

(Support -> Discussions -> Tiger Forums -> Installation & Setup -> Perth Western Australia WA Daylight Savings Time Zone change via Terminal)

There are just a couple of commands to use, specifically:

sudo rm /etc/localtime
sudo ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Japan /etc/localtime
ls -la /etc/localtime

and this command to make the change visible:

open /System/Library/PreferencePanes/DateAndTime.prefPane/

And to change the timezone back:

sudo rm /etc/localtime
sudo ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Australia/Perth /etc/localtime
ls -la /etc/localtime

and then:

open /System/Library/PreferencePanes/DateAndTime.prefPane/

(You can omit 'sudo' if you're using Remote Desktop).

Of course, there are still the issues of iCal appointments shuffling. But that seems to be the only issue.

To avoid the issues with iCal, open up iCal, open up your iCal Preferences, and select the "Advanced" tab, and enable time-zone support.

After the time-zone change, when you or your users next open iCal, you will be asked "Your computer's time zone changed" ... "Do you want to change the time zone in iCal's main calendar view to 'Japan'?"

When this message comes up, select "Cancel" (e.g. NO). And your iCal appointments will NOT be time-shifted.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Derek

Did you used to work at UWA MedDent? 🙂

Hi Alex.

Yes, of course. That's me! 🙂

Cheers,
Derek

Hi folks.

I've tested the NTP (network time protocol) server idea a bit further...

I found that if I am MORE patient, the clients DO in fact get the NEW time (set manually on my Mac OS X Server)...

This method doesn't involve changing the time-zone to Osaka-- you can just leave it as "Perth". And I've detailed a process for changing this setting across multiple workstations...

More details on this thread...
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=3608068&#3608068

Thanks to Martin Hill for pointing out that I need to be more patient waiting for my Time Server to update 🙂

Cheers,
Derek

I trust I'm the only person in WA silly enough to be up and on the computer fiddling with time zone things at this hour of the night, so I'll share what I have discovered on my systems:

1) at an underlying system level, applying a patch via "zic" (the zoneinfo compiler utility) as discussed above in this thread has basically worked: my Terminal app and everything else at a basic, BSD system level knows the correct time.

2) Entourage is confused - even after I manually edited the Office 2004 timezones file. Although the system is still set to "Perth", it claims I'm set to Osaka. In no place am I set to Osaka, nor have I ever been (I went straight to the zic hack, although I had created my own modified timezone file from the info on the time zones mailing list)

3) The weirdest behaviour comes from Apple's own Date & Time panel. I don't think I can post a screen shot here, so I'll describe it carefully. The correct time is now 0346 (UTC+0900). In the Date & Time System Preference Pane, on the Date & Time tab, the analog clock shows the correct time, but the digital clock is still showing standard time. The exact same thing happens if I show the clock in the menu bar (using the Clock tab), but if I show the time in a Window rather than the Menu Bar, both digital and analog display the correct time.

If someone can figure this last behaviour out, congratulations!!

I noticed this the other day when I was testing it. I've decided to just stick with setting my timezone to JST (which it's on now that Daylight savings is in).
I tried editing the zic file posted on this thread so that instead of being GMT +8 with an offset of 1, it was just GMT +9. That didn't fix it either. I guess we'll have to wait till Apple releases a patch.
Just on that, how would they do it? Any ideas?