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

Alan Cox
2009-01-07T09:54:43Z

> The range of signed 32-bit times is 1901 through 2039, which has only
> one century, 2000, which is a leap year. So the caveat for leap years
> is correct but unnecessary.

The standard however (and library code) were updated many years ago, so
the description is still wrong.

> So I've discoverd, at least on Ubuntu, something wonderful and
> reassuring. It already works exactly the way I think is correct. Look:
> I create a test timezone with no daylight saving and one leap second:

This is entirely configurable - see my earlier post about the "right" and
posix timezones. Really however that belongs on the glibc list.

As far as the kernel and leapseconds go - remember the kernel RTC support
does not know about leap seconds