[LEAPSECS] Coming of age in the solar system

[M. Warner Losh]

In message: <1283600662.9314.20.camel at localhost>
            Paul Sheer <p at 2038bug.com> writes:

: 

: > 

: > Of course, it would be cheaper for the software folks to never have to

: > worry about it again.  That would also make them predictable.

: > 

: 

: The software industry doesn't know or care about leap seconds.

: 

: The whole time issue is universally dealt with using a single

: line in all installation manuals:

: 

:     "We recommend customers install NTP."

: 

: The few specialized applications that need to worry about leap

: seconds have long since worked around the problem.


That's exactly the attitude that keeps leap seconds from working
properly.  Oh, just do X and there will be no problems.  Of course, by
saying that, you still have the problem.  NTP doesn't solve the leap
second problem: you still have weird stuff that happens at the leap
second.  NTP usually lets you recover from it, since the last few leap
seconds have shown that even today's modern ntp network can't get the
leap seconds right.

This gets back to my earlier statement: When the definition of right
is "didn't crash the OS" and not "ticked time correctly" you get all
kinds of wacky behavior.

Warner