Date command give incorrect results because of day light savings time

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Environment

Linux sles10 sp1 sp2 and sp3

Situation

Because of DST, the date command + 1 day would not give the correct results: The issue is with the handling of the daylight savings change and the +1 day option. Notice the differences:

SLES 9 SP4:

date (coreutils) 5.2.1

date -d "2009-11-01 +1 day"

Mon Nov 2 00:00:00 EST 2009

OpenSuse 11 (For comparison only):

date (GNU coreutils) 6.12

date -d "2009-11-01 +1 day"

Mon Nov 2 00:00:00 EST 2009

These give you the same time the next day, midnight.

Now look at how SLES 10 responds:

SLES 10 SP2:

date (GNU coreutils) 5.93

date -d "2009-11-01 +1 day"

Sun Nov 1 23:00:00 EST 2009

It is going 24 hours ahead, but the DST change causes it to give 11PM the same day. This problem happens with any DST change (any year), not just the example and any SLES10 patch level (SP1,SP2 and SP3)

Resolution

Engineering has fixed this. The fix is attached to the bug.

Disclaimer

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