Date: Sun, 31 Dec 1995 00:01:16 +0100 (MET) From: Arjan.deVet@adv.IAEhv.nl (Arjan de Vet) To: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Upcoming leap second 1996-01-01 Message-ID: <199512302301.AAA05669@adv.IAEhv.nl>
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Last year, on July 1st 1994, some accounting scripts of mine did strange things because of a leap second the previous day which made that day 86401 seconds instead of 86400. I think I was using FreeBSD 1.1 at that time. At January 1st, 1996 there will be another leap second. I started checking some things in order to avoid the same problems this time, using FreeBSD 2.0.5 now. I did some tests and it appears that FreeBSD now uses POSIX' idea of time_t values, i.e., it does not support leap seconds and the internal clock should be adjusted with -1 second on 1996-1-1 00:00:00 UTC. I understand from RFC1305 (NTP) that this will be done automatically because I'm using NTP. Am I correct? Did FreeBSD 1.1 not use the POSIX idea of time_t values, i.e., it was counting the real number of seconds since 1970-1-1 including the leap seconds? That could explain why my scripts failed then because they relied on a day being 86400 seconds and not 86401 seconds. Happy New Year! Arjan -- Arjan de Vet <devet@IAEhv.nl> (IAE) Internet Access Eindhoven (IAE) <Arjan.deVet@adv.IAEhv.nl> (home) URL: http://www.IAEhv.nl/iae/people/devet/
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