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

Alan Cox
2009-01-07T10:52:43Z

> True but irrelevant because the RTC returns a timestamp. And it's
> quietly understood that the RTC is only an approximation.

You miss the point.

The RTC stores the CMOS time in MM DD YY HH:MM:SS format. That conversion
is done kernel side when reading/writing the RTC chip. Thus if you are
using leap second timing your BIOS RTC values will not agree with the
expected value.

> However it is now clear that no special kernel support is required for
> leap-seconds, and any such code that's been incorporated needs to be
> removed. Removed I say!

There never has been any. Its all handled (both posix and sane) by glibc.

Alan