Author Topic: IMPORTANT: DST time changes  (Read 9499 times)

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IMPORTANT: DST time changes
« on: March 15, 2007, 10:27:15 »
A number of users are reporting problems with QueueMetrics being one hour off after DST came into effect on March, 11. This is caused by problems with the Java VM running QueueMetrics.

The United States has planned a change to its DST observance beginning in 2007. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 mandates that DST will start on the second Sunday in March and end on the first Sunday in November. In 2007, the start and stop dates will be March 11 and November 4, respectively. These dates are different from previous DST start and stop dates.

WHICH USERS ARE AFFECTED?
This problem may be affecting you if your company, your servers or your call centers are located in either USA, Canada or another country or region which sets DST according to USA standards.

HOW DO I KNOW IF I AM AFFECTED?
You will notice that since March 11 your QueueMetrics reports seem to be one hour off. You may also notice problems in the realtime pages.
This problem does not seem to affect everyone living in involved regions, likely because of the different JVMs used to run QueueMetrics and/or the way the clock is set on the server (as local time versus GMT).

HOW CAN THE PROBLEM BE FIXED?
  • Make sure your Linux box is aligned with the latest timezone data (on CentOS/RHEL, the package is named tzdata-2006m
  • Stop QueueMetrics
  • Download the Sun JDK updater
  • Run the updater with java -jar tzupdater.jar -u -v - if you installed QueueMetrics automatically, your Java to patch resides in /usr/local/queuemetrics/java
  • Restart QueueMetrics

If you run a JVM from Sun, you can find the updater here: http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/Intl/USDST/ (free registration required), while if you run a JDK from a different vendor you should check with your vendor for the timezone patch.

Please keep us posted if you encounter this problem or not, which versions of Java you are running and if you installed QueueMetrics manually or using yum.


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Re: IMPORTANT: DST time changes
« Reply #1 on: March 15, 2007, 10:46:07 »
We have been mailing our customers today and adding this piece of news to the Queuemetrics website as well.

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Re: IMPORTANT: DST time changes
« Reply #2 on: March 15, 2007, 10:50:52 »
We created a poll to keep us posted on how many people are experiencing problems - please take a second and answer it at: http://forum.queuemetrics.com/index.php?topic=11.0


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Typical update sequence
« Reply #3 on: March 15, 2007, 11:20:18 »
This is a typical update sequence for a RHEL/CentOS/TrixBox/Druid box installed using yum. This should be pretty similar for most other Linux boxes.
We assume you already manually downloaded the Java updater as a file called tzupdater-1.1.0-2007c.zip in your work directory. You must be logged in as root to make these changes.

yum update tzdata

This command will install the latest tzdata in your Linux box. At this moment it seems to be tzdata.noarch.2007c-1.el4

/etc/init.d/queuemetrics stop

Stop QueueMetrics.

unzip tzupdater-1.1.0-2007c.zip
cd tzupdater-1.1.0-2007c/
/usr/local/queuemetrics/java/bin/java -jar tzupdater.jar -t


Run a complete test. If it finds no errors, you are fine and do not need an upgrade.

/usr/local/queuemetrics/java/bin/java -jar tzupdater.jar -u

Runs the update.

/usr/local/queuemetrics/java/bin/java -jar tzupdater.jar -t

We run the thest again. At this point no more errors should be found.

/etc/init.d/queuemetrics restart

Restart QueueMetrics.

Now it should be working okay.

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Shorter update sequence for yum installers
« Reply #4 on: March 15, 2007, 18:13:34 »
We have released the JDK 1.5.0 u11 as the default JDK for QueueMetrics when installed through yum.

You should then do the following as a shorter upgrade process:

yum update tzdata
yum update queuemetrics-java


And after the update restart QueueMetrics by typing

/etc/init.d/queuemetrics start

This should be it. Please keep us posted if you encounter problems of any kind.