Phil Pennock <[email protected]> wrote: > > Can anybody explain to me, or point me to an explanation, why leap > > seconds are a concern for ntpd at all rather than for zoneinfo? > > Unix systems keep UTC (typically without 61-second-minute support) > rather than TAI.
No, Unix systems count seconds since the epoch. A leap second is just another second that passes. Whether that second is called 23:59:60 or 00:00:00 is a matter for strftime(). > See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time and "Unix time across > midnight when a UTC leap second is inserted" That just says that POSIX demands that the second counting be screwed up, but doesn't provide a rationale. Okay, further down, under "History" it mentions that the POSIX committee was indeed considering both the "change the counting" and "leave it to strftime()" options and decided to go with the former, although the rationale for this still remains speculative. -- Christian "naddy" Weisgerber [email protected]
