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SOURCE: Digital Equipment Corporation DATE: February 28, 1996
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TITLE: Digital UNIX Systems Date/Time Problems - Leap Year
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Dear Digital Customer,
PROBLEM:
Recently Digital Equipment Corporation discovered a time keeping problem in
Digital UNIX with respect to leap year recognition.
1) The 'date' command rejects February 29, 1996 (or any other leap
year) as a valid date.
2) When the system time is changed with the 'date' to any date in March
of a leap year and then rebooted, the system clock will lose
one day.
IMPACT:
Reboots during the month of March will cause the loss of a day.
If a machine without the ECO/patches identified below being installed, is
not rebooted during the month of March, the problem will not be seen.
WORKAROUND:
A: Boot the system to single user mode, set the date & time, then continue
the boot process to multi-user mode. This could be done on each
powerup/reboot if it is not possible to install the available ECO/patches.
B: A workaround for the 'date' command not accepting the 29th would be to
set the date to the 1st of March and reboot, if it is not possible to
install the available ECO/patches.
Digital has corrected this problem and provided ECO kits containing new
binaries.
A set of ECO's/patches, identified as CLOCK_DUNIX1032d, are available on the
Internet and we strongly recommend that you obtain the ECO and install
at the earliest:
via FTP search the directory tree of
ftp://atlanta.service.digital.com/pub/patches/clockpatches (available now)
ftp://ftp.service.digital.com/public/osf (will be available shortly)
via Worldwide Web Service
http://www.service.digital.com (will be available shortly)
- Please refer to the applicable README notes information
prior to the installation of the remedial solutions on your system.
The above kits can be obtained through your normal Digital support channels.
NOTE: For non-contract/non-warranty customers there may be a nominal charge
for the kit, to cover the costs of media and handling.
We apologize for any inconvenience that this may cause you.
Sincerely,
Digital Equipment Corporation
Copyright (c) Digital Equipment Corporation, 1996 All Rights Reserved.
Unpublished Rights Reserved Under The Copyright Laws Of The United States.
--
Jeff Finkelstein | "When you have excluded the impossible,
Digital Equipment Corporation | whatever remains, however improbable,
finkels_at_alf.dec.com | must be the truth" - Arthur Conan Doyle
Received on Wed Feb 28 1996 - 20:45:01 NZDT