Re: [ntpwg] Bug: Status/Summary of slashdot leap-second crash on new years 2008-2009

David Newall
2009-01-07T10:04:25Z

Linas Vepstas wrote:
> Currently, the Linux kernel keeps time in UTC. This means
> that it must take special actions to tick twice when a leap
> second comes by.

Except it doesn't have to tick twice. Refer to
http://lkml.org/lkml/2009/1/7/78 in which I show that a time_t (what
time() returns) counts leap seconds (According to Bernstein this is what
UTC means), and using zoneinfo, the library processes leap seconds
correctly.

I just realised that the Notes in man 2 time are confusing and probably
unnecessary. Suffice to say that (assuming correctly configured
zoneinfo) time() returns the number of seconds elapsed since start 1970.