Installing updated timezone info on old FreeBSD

I installed the 2007 timezone info on my old FreeBSD box, so that I didn't have to worry about daylight savings in March. There's a much easier way to do this if you have a system on which ports are still supported, which is to install misc/zoneinfo. If you have an older box like I do, these instructions might help.

Steps:

1. Download timezone data. (Note that as new versions are published, the filename gets updated. Substitute the new filename as appropriate.)

cd /tmp
fetch ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/tzdata2007a.tar.gz

2. Extract it

cd /tmp
mkdir tz
cd tz
tar zxvf ../tzdata2007a.tar.gz

3. Run zic

zic -d /usr/share/zoneinfo -p America/New_York  -u root -g wheel
  africa antarctica asia australasia etcetera europe
  factory northamerica southamerica systemv

4. Install zone.tab

install -o root -g wheel -m 444  zone.tab /usr/share/zoneinfo/

5. Fix /etc/localtime (on some systems it's a symlink; on mine it was a copy)

cp /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Los_Angeles /etc/localtime

6. Test it (note, this step actually changes the clock. I had an unexpected cron job run so be careful!)

date 200703110159; sleep 61; date

Test output should be something like

Sun Mar 11 01:59:00 PST 2007
Sun Mar 11 03:00:01 PDT 2007

7. Set your clock back.