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Daylight Savings Time (DST) is a geo-political definition which can change at *any* time. While the Internet Assigned Number authority (http://www.iana.org/time-zones) does track and update territorial DST definitions, there is no ability to confirm and test all impacts on Timezone Changes in a timely manner.  This note will discuss 2016 Turkey DST time changes including the most common IT changes and corrective actions including OS, Java and RDBMS as well as how to change the ODA timezone changes.

Applies to:

Goal

As proper due to important national events, countries may choose to delay or alter timezone definitions at any time outside the the normal IT timezone patch building cycles.
Therefore it is important to be aware of these Timezone changes which can impact all levels of the IT stack including agents, Clients, servers and time dependent data.

This document describes procedures for updating timezone changes using provided definitions for Turkey DST 2016 which recently announced it will remain on the +03:00 Offset indefinitely.
As the ODA and many other products are on fixed patching cycles, alternative steps to update timezone settings may be required IF you are impacted by the recent 2016 announcement by Turkey that they will remain at UTC +3:00.

This note will also suggest manual steps as an alternative to waiting for ODA impacted patches allowing users to alter Timezone settings which may fall out of the normal timezone patch update cycles of once or twice a year.

Solution

1. ODA Timezone settings - Manual steps using alternative +03:00 Named Offsets (6 steps)
   
   
   
   Kenya , Nairobi uses a fixed +03:00 offset* (No Summer Time / Daylight Saving Time)
   
   Kenya , Nairobi can be used with the ODA configurator to alter onecommand.params file as an alternative Timezone
   
   The onecommand.params files can also be manually altered directly as the user root
   
       -   

   [root...]# cd /opt/oracle/oak/onecmd

     
       - save a copy of the oncommand.params file
   
           

   [root...]# cp  onecommand.param onecommand.param.old

     
   
       

   [root...]# vi onecommand.params file

     
       - edit the line under the second section labeled ClusterInfo
   
            # CLUSTERINFO
               ....
               TIMEZONE= .....   value and change to   

   TIMEZONE=Africa/Nairobi

    
       - Save the file (wq! oncommand.params)
         and return back to the command line
       - from the same directory execute ./GridInst -s 7
      

   [root...]# ./GridInst -s 7

     
   
   This should run the Step 7 SetTimezone which will be set on both nodes of the ODA
   
       - Once completed you will see a logfile generated and the  " Exiting.....
       - You can confirm if the Timezone has been succesfully altered on BOTH nodes by issuing:
   
        # date +'%:z'
   
       - This should show as the following
   

   # date +'%:z'
          +03:00

   - Issue the same command from the second node
   

   
       # date +'%:z'
         +03:00

    
   
   *Comment: Some of the other regions with a fixed UTC +03:00 (not using DST include) Madagascar , Republic of Moldova (Transnistria Region only) Qatar Saudi Arabia , Somalia , Sudan , Tanzania , Uganda , Yemen.
   
   
   
2. OS Timezone settings
   
   
   Binary download
   
   OL6 2016g tzdata packages can be downloaded from here:

      http://public-yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL6/latest/x86_64/getPackage/tzdata-2016g-2.el6.noarch.rpm
      http://public-yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL6/latest/x86_64/getPackage/tzdata-java-2016g-2.el6.noarch.rpm

   OL5 2016 tzdata packages can be downloaded from here:

      http://public-yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL5/latest/x86_64/getPackage/tzdata-2016h-1.el5.x86_64.rpm
      http://public-yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL5/latest/x86_64/getPackage/tzdata-java-2016h-1.el5.x86_64.rpm

   
   Note 1931729.1 - Linux- How to Disable Daylight Savings Time (DST), and Modify the Timezone on Linux Based Server
   
   Confirmation step
   
   # date +'%:z'
   
   e.g.
   
       # date +'%:z'
         +03:00
    
   
   
   
3. RDBMS and OJVM
   
   To see if you NEED DSTv28 for the 2016 Turkish change please see note 2185562.1
   
   Turkey Continues on Daylight Saving Time From 2016 - Impact on Oracle RDBMS(Doc ID 2185562.1)
   

   Also, you can download the RDBMS DSTv28 patch 24701840 and OJVM DSTv28 patch 24701882 are proactively done for all supported versions and platforms.

   Confirmation Step
   
   SQL> SELECT version FROM v$timezone_file;           -- should show as 28
         
   VERSION
   ------------
     28
   
   
   
4. How To Change Timezone for Grid Infrastructure (Doc ID 1209444.1)
   
   OS Default Timezone Setting
   Linux

   To change: /usr/sbin/timeconfig

   To display current setting:

     cat /etc/sysconfig/clock
     ZONE="America/Los_Angeles"     
     UTC=true
     ARC=false

   To find out all valid setting:
   
       ls -l /usr/share/zoneinfo

   Anything that appears in this directory is valid to use, for example, CST6CDT and America/Chicago.

   Note: the "Zone" field in /etc/sysconfig/clock could be different than what's in /usr/share/zoneinfo in OL6.3/RHEL6.3, the one from /usr/share/zoneinfo should be used in
   
        $GRID_HOME/crs/install/s_crsconfig_<nodename>_env.txt

   
   

 REFERENCES

Other important and helpful references for other portions of the stack include the following

http://linux.oracle.com/errata/ELEA-2016-1982.html

Links to the TZupdater tool from common vendors are

Platform JDKVendor TZUpdater URL  for Solaris, Linux, Windows Oracle

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/tzdata-versions-138805.html

Updated DST Transitions and New Time Zones in Oracle RDBMS and OJVM Time Zone File Patches (Doc ID 412160.1)

References

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