On 2009-02-10_10:20:03, John Hasler wrote: > Mark Allums writes: > > Totally irrelevant, but: Isn't the Linux epoch 64 bits? > > Only with a 64 bit kernel. > -- > John Hasler
I think you are mistaken. The current _standard_ is 64 bits for unix time. Most actual computers don't yet carry the extra 32 high order bits, and do their calculations assuming that they are all zero. It will be no problem to implement a 64 bit counter on a 32 bit computer well before it is needed. It may already be implemented in linux. And when the computer clock is set to the correct time that extra 32 bit word is all zeros. On 64 bit computers, most kernels didn't implement the extra code to use only a half word when the _standard_ was 32 bits. OT: The standard also does not recognize leap seconds. How does that work? A computer that has a really stable clock ticking once per second, would suddenly be one second fast when a leap second is 'added'. And as more leap seconds are added over time, the computer clock would become several seconds off from 'true' UTC. Isn't this a problem? No. Nobody runs a computer connected to the internet without connecting to an NTP server regularly. These servers simply change what they say is the unix time at the moment when a leap second is officially declared to happen. All us users just see our computers being one second off from what the NTP server says, and change our clocks. -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
