-- Sun Microsystems Inc. -- Sun has created a portal page with DST information for all Sun products. Sun is offering free patches for its Solaris Unix operating systems, Versions 8, 9 and 10; Patches for Versions 5, 6 and 7 will only be provided for a fee, according to the company. And patches for Java applications, including the Java Runtime Environment (JRE), will have to be applied, according to the vendor.

More recent JRE versions -- including Java SE 6 or later, J2SE 5.0 Update 6 or later, J2SE 1.4.2_11 or later and J2SE 1.3.1_18 or later -- already include new time rules, according to Sun. Older versions can be replaced with the newer, corrected versions, or administrators can use Sun's tzupdater tool from the Java SE download page to update Versions 1.4 or later.

Users of older Solaris operating systems do have another alternative to updating the systems with newer releases, however. At least one third-party vendor, Terix Computer Service, has announced free software to update the DST features in Sun Solaris 5, 6 and 7.

Several third-party software vendors are offering automated applications that can help identify and patch some DST issues.

Numara Software Inc. in Tampa, Fla., is offering free trials of its Numara Track-It and Numara Asset Manager applications, which look at a computer's operating system to correct DST problems. Tony Thomas, a Numara product manager, said users can install the applications and get some status reports on their Windows systems within three to four hours. Other operating systems, including Linux, Unix and Macintosh, can be evaluated through more detailed manual configuring, he said.