[SOLVED] web client timezone display problem

[Ron Haines]

My problem is that calendar events occurring in most of October are displaying 1 hour too late in the web interface. Editing the event shows the correct start time and the correct timezone is set for the event, for the user and on the server and client computers. The server is OS X 10.4.11 which has correct timezone data (as shown by zdump), the client computers likewise. In previous years the change to daylight saving in Sydney was at the end of October, and this year onwards it is at the start of October. Somewhere there is stale timezone information and my guess it is in java on the server.

On our server:
java version "1.5.0_07"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.5.0_07-164)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.5.0_07-87, mixed mode, sharing)

There is a java update from Apple which updates to:
java version "1.5.0_13"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.5.0_13-b05-241)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.5.0_13-121, mixed mode, sharing)

So I have two questions:
1. Might updating java on the server fix the calendar event display error?
2. Will doing this update have any untoward effects on Zimbra, which is running quite nicely at the moment?

thanks in advance for any replies.
Ron.

[Ron Haines]

To at least answer my own question, in part, having installed this update it does not solve the problem of calendar events in October displaying an hour later than they should. The release notes from Apple say:

"Java for Mac OS X 10.4, Release 6 adds support for the latest Daylight Saving Time (DST) and time zone information as of August 20, 2007"

so I was hoping this would fix this bug. The daylight saving changes for Sydney were incorporated into the Olsen database by mid 2007 so they should have been in the above Java update. As things now stand the web display of calendars for October is useless to us. My boss's personal assistant should not have to remember that all the events in a three week period are really scheduled for an hour earlier than they are displayed.

[Ron Haines]

To complete the answer my own question, the incorrect display of calendar events was due to outdated timezone information in /opt/zimbra/conf/timezones.ics (thanks to John in Zimbra support for pointing me at this file). This is in ZCO 4.5, however I have now found other forum messages (link) which indicate other versions also store timezone data but in other ways. If you have had recent changes to your daylight saving rules, watch out for this.