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Daylight savings time switch

 
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mario
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Joined: 03 Oct 2006
Posts: 7182

PostPosted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 7:49 pm    Post subject: Daylight savings time switch Reply with quote

So the lovely moment is coming again (on Nov 4th), and this time I'm ready again to stay awake the whole night. Partly because of inherent complications DST switch brings with it, and partly because of my inexperience with the issue, there hasn't been a single switch so far that hasn't caused me (and Gixen customers) grave problems.

This time I hope it will not be so, as all preparations are already in place.

The most important lesson learned: Never, never keep servers in any other than pacific time zone (same one ebay servers are in). Why would that matter, you may ask - eastern time zone is fine, just subtract those three hours, and you are set? Well, the problem is... The switch does not happen at the same time in different time zones... Servers in the eastern zone will switch first (causing the time difference to become 2 or 4 hours instead of 3). Then, three hours later, just as I would think I fixed everything and I'm ready to get some well-deserved sleep, switch happens in the pacific zone, disrupting things again... and making the fun last the whole night. Not this time. I hope.
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Cupid



Joined: 09 Aug 2007
Posts: 7762
Location: Bristol, UK

PostPosted: Mon Oct 29, 2007 4:36 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hmm I see the problem.... do eBay actually change the duration of auctions as a result though?... I would guess that they do not (we had our change from BST to GMT this weekend and I didn't notice any auctions moving as a result, but I could be wrong?).

Would it not be better just to stick with a timezone that doesn't have these shifts on the gixen servers... like GMT for instance, but if you didn't like that one I would assume that there must be some more US centric timezone that does not have shifts?
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mario
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Joined: 03 Oct 2006
Posts: 7182

PostPosted: Mon Oct 29, 2007 6:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Cupid wrote:
Hmm I see the problem.... do eBay actually change the duration of auctions as a result though?...


No, the only thing that changes is the display string on the listings - it will now display PST instead of PDT. Gixen converts this to the unix timestamp, which should be unaffected by the switch.

Cupid wrote:
Would it not be better just to stick with a timezone that doesn't have these shifts on the gixen servers... like GMT for instance, but if you didn't like that one I would assume that there must be some more US centric timezone that does not have shifts?


GMT would do it too, but there is no US timezone that does not observe DST, so I prefer to keep the servers in the pacific zone.
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