Re: [chrony-dev] Handling of leap seconds

[Miroslav Lichvar <mlichvar@xxxxxxxxxx>]

(replying from an archive)

On Sun, 01 Mar 2020, Dennis Law wrote:
> It seems that when the program finds out about a leap second
> occurrence too close to the occurrence itself (within 5 seconds), it
> simply does not attempt to correct it.
>
> From my understanding from the code, the program should be able to
> handle leap seconds even right before before it occurs, as it simply
> schedules a timeout at either 00.00.00 (insertion) or 23:59:59
> (deletion). 
>
> What is then the reason for the 5 seconds check? Am I missing
> something obvious here?

It prevents measurements from being accumulated and also prevents
changes in the leap second status. The reason is that all kind of
weird things may happen around the leap second (e.g. mixing of
pre-leap and post-leap timestamps causing errors in the offsets, leap
bits being set/cleared prematurely), so it's better to let it coast
through.

Leap seconds are normally announced by reference clocks at least an
hour before the event. Is the 5 second check causing you some issues?

-- 
Miroslav Lichvar


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