Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-07-01 Thread Chris Adams
Once upon a time, Mike Hammett na...@ics-il.net said:
 v5 is 2.4, v6 3.3.5 

Don't know why a 3.3.5 kernel would have deadlocked; don't think there
are any known issues that would cause that, unless there are Mikrotik
specific patches that caused the problem.

I believe the bug from the 2008 leap second was present in kernels in
2.4 up through 2.6.26 (although Red Hat at least patched it in their
older version long-term support kernels).

-- 
Chris Adams c...@cmadams.net


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-07-01 Thread Mike Hammett
The only v6 ones that are sure to have had the problem are based on tilera 
chips and one of two NTP packages available. *shrugs* 




- 
Mike Hammett 
Intelligent Computing Solutions 
http://www.ics-il.com 



Midwest Internet Exchange 
http://www.midwest-ix.com 


- Original Message -

From: Chris Adams c...@cmadams.net 
To: nanog@nanog.org 
Sent: Wednesday, July 1, 2015 1:17:06 PM 
Subject: Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND 

Once upon a time, Mike Hammett na...@ics-il.net said: 
 v5 is 2.4, v6 3.3.5 

Don't know why a 3.3.5 kernel would have deadlocked; don't think there 
are any known issues that would cause that, unless there are Mikrotik 
specific patches that caused the problem. 

I believe the bug from the 2008 leap second was present in kernels in 
2.4 up through 2.6.26 (although Red Hat at least patched it in their 
older version long-term support kernels). 

-- 
Chris Adams c...@cmadams.net 



Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-07-01 Thread Rubens Kuhl
On Wed, Jul 1, 2015 at 3:17 PM, Chris Adams c...@cmadams.net wrote:

 Once upon a time, Mike Hammett na...@ics-il.net said:
  v5 is 2.4, v6 3.3.5

 Don't know why a 3.3.5 kernel would have deadlocked; don't think there
 are any known issues that would cause that, unless there are Mikrotik
 specific patches that caused the problem.

 I believe the bug from the 2008 leap second was present in kernels in
 2.4 up through 2.6.26 (although Red Hat at least patched it in their
 older version long-term support kernels).


3.3 was listed as buggy in this regard as well.


Rubens


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-07-01 Thread Guilherme Ganascim
I had problems with Leap Second with mikrotik in versions 6.29.1, 6.28, 6.5 and 
other versions.

Configured NTP Client in all of them.

Anyone else had this problem?


 On Jun 19, 2015, at 19:30, Baldur Norddahl baldur.nordd...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 On 19 June 2015 at 23:58, Harlan Stenn st...@ntp.org wrote:
 
 Bad idea.
 
 When restarting ntpd your clocks will likely be off by a second, which
 will cause a backward step, which will force the problem you claim to be
 avoiding.
 
 
 If you are afraid that your routers will crash due to the leapsecond, then
 it would help to disable the thing that you think will crash them. Even if
 the router crashes when you enable it later on. Because then you can have
 one router crash at a time and have it happen in a service window where you
 are ready for it. Instead of having all routers in your whole network crash
 at exactly the same time.
 
 Regards,
 
 Baldur



Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-07-01 Thread Rubens Kuhl
On Wed, Jul 1, 2015 at 10:17 AM, Mike Hammett na...@ics-il.net wrote:

 It looks to have only affected the CCR line and only those running the NTP
 and not the SNTP package.


That's Mikrotik's position, but reports of some users contradict their
version (both in the need for NTP and for only affecting CCR line),
although the NTP package is clearly a contributing factor.



Rubens


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-07-01 Thread Mike Hammett
It looks to have only affected the CCR line and only those running the NTP and 
not the SNTP package. 




- 
Mike Hammett 
Intelligent Computing Solutions 
http://www.ics-il.com 



Midwest Internet Exchange 
http://www.midwest-ix.com 


- Original Message -

From: Guilherme Ganascim guilherme.ganas...@persistelecom.com.br 
To: nanog@nanog.org 
Sent: Tuesday, June 30, 2015 8:08:28 PM 
Subject: Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND 

I had problems with Leap Second with mikrotik in versions 6.29.1, 6.28, 6.5 and 
other versions. 

Configured NTP Client in all of them. 

Anyone else had this problem? 


 On Jun 19, 2015, at 19:30, Baldur Norddahl baldur.nordd...@gmail.com wrote: 
 
 On 19 June 2015 at 23:58, Harlan Stenn st...@ntp.org wrote: 
 
 Bad idea. 
 
 When restarting ntpd your clocks will likely be off by a second, which 
 will cause a backward step, which will force the problem you claim to be 
 avoiding. 
 
 
 If you are afraid that your routers will crash due to the leapsecond, then 
 it would help to disable the thing that you think will crash them. Even if 
 the router crashes when you enable it later on. Because then you can have 
 one router crash at a time and have it happen in a service window where you 
 are ready for it. Instead of having all routers in your whole network crash 
 at exactly the same time. 
 
 Regards, 
 
 Baldur 




Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-07-01 Thread Michel Luczak
 I had problems with Leap Second with mikrotik in versions 6.29.1, 6.28, 6.5 
 and other versions.
 
 Configured NTP Client in all of them.
 
 Anyone else had this problem?

Apparently 6.27 was the safe version to have (no issues on our CRS and CCR 
routers).

Regards, Michel



Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-07-01 Thread Rubens Kuhl
On Wed, Jul 1, 2015 at 11:15 AM, Michel Luczak fr...@shrd.fr wrote:

  I had problems with Leap Second with mikrotik in versions 6.29.1, 6.28,
 6.5 and other versions.
 
  Configured NTP Client in all of them.
 
  Anyone else had this problem?

 Apparently 6.27 was the safe version to have (no issues on our CRS and CCR
 routers).



Not quite. Reported crashes included 6.27, so it's possible that some other
mitigating factor helped not to crash (like using SNTP instead of NTP,
although there seems to be people with crashes using SNTP or no SNTP/NTP at
all).

Variations also include whether hardware watchdog was able to reboot the
box or it just froze (including frontal display not responding).

Rubens


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-07-01 Thread Chris Adams
Once upon a time, Rubens Kuhl rube...@gmail.com said:
 Not quite. Reported crashes included 6.27, so it's possible that some other
 mitigating factor helped not to crash (like using SNTP instead of NTP,
 although there seems to be people with crashes using SNTP or no SNTP/NTP at
 all).

These are running Linux kernels, right?  Anybody know which version?  I
know the last couple of leap seconds hit (different) bugs in the Linux
kernel.  The 2012 bug was timer related and confused some user-space
applications, but the 2008 bug could cause a kernel deadlock (which this
sounds like).

-- 
Chris Adams c...@cmadams.net


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-07-01 Thread Mike Hammett
http://forum.mikrotik.com/viewtopic.php?f=2t=98138#p488731 




- 
Mike Hammett 
Intelligent Computing Solutions 
http://www.ics-il.com 



Midwest Internet Exchange 
http://www.midwest-ix.com 


- Original Message -

From: Rubens Kuhl rube...@gmail.com 
To: Nanog nanog@nanog.org 
Sent: Wednesday, July 1, 2015 1:20:30 PM 
Subject: Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND 

On Wed, Jul 1, 2015 at 3:17 PM, Chris Adams c...@cmadams.net wrote: 

 Once upon a time, Mike Hammett na...@ics-il.net said: 
  v5 is 2.4, v6 3.3.5 
 
 Don't know why a 3.3.5 kernel would have deadlocked; don't think there 
 are any known issues that would cause that, unless there are Mikrotik 
 specific patches that caused the problem. 
 
 I believe the bug from the 2008 leap second was present in kernels in 
 2.4 up through 2.6.26 (although Red Hat at least patched it in their 
 older version long-term support kernels). 
 

3.3 was listed as buggy in this regard as well. 


Rubens 



Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-07-01 Thread Mike Hammett
v5 is 2.4, v6 3.3.5 




- 
Mike Hammett 
Intelligent Computing Solutions 
http://www.ics-il.com 



Midwest Internet Exchange 
http://www.midwest-ix.com 


- Original Message -

From: Chris Adams c...@cmadams.net 
To: nanog@nanog.org 
Sent: Wednesday, July 1, 2015 9:39:09 AM 
Subject: Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND 

Once upon a time, Rubens Kuhl rube...@gmail.com said: 
 Not quite. Reported crashes included 6.27, so it's possible that some other 
 mitigating factor helped not to crash (like using SNTP instead of NTP, 
 although there seems to be people with crashes using SNTP or no SNTP/NTP at 
 all). 

These are running Linux kernels, right? Anybody know which version? I 
know the last couple of leap seconds hit (different) bugs in the Linux 
kernel. The 2012 bug was timer related and confused some user-space 
applications, but the 2008 bug could cause a kernel deadlock (which this 
sounds like). 

-- 
Chris Adams c...@cmadams.net 



Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-07-01 Thread Harlan Stenn
Mike Hammett writes:
 It looks to have only affected the CCR line and only those running the
 NTP and not the SNTP package.

Any idea what version of NTP or what their configuration looked like?

H


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-07-01 Thread Mike Hammett
No, I'm surprised we know the kernels. They're a pretty closed company. 

All we can do is enter IPs for the client side and turn it on\off server side. 
Well, and broadcast\multicast\manycast. 




- 
Mike Hammett 
Intelligent Computing Solutions 
http://www.ics-il.com 



Midwest Internet Exchange 
http://www.midwest-ix.com 


- Original Message -

From: Harlan Stenn st...@ntp.org 
To: Mike Hammett na...@ics-il.net 
Cc: nanog@nanog.org 
Sent: Wednesday, July 1, 2015 7:43:43 PM 
Subject: Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND 

Mike Hammett writes: 
 It looks to have only affected the CCR line and only those running the 
 NTP and not the SNTP package. 

Any idea what version of NTP or what their configuration looked like? 

H 



Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-25 Thread Tore Anderson
* Stefan Schlesinger s...@ono.at

  On 25 Jun 2015, at 03:14, Damian Menscher via NANOG nanog@nanog.org wrote:
  
  http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/time-technology-and-leaping-seconds.html
  comes dangerously close to your modest proposal.
 
 I wonder why Google hasn't published the patch yet. Leap smear sounds
 like the sane way to do leap seconds, and it would't break software
 at all, because time adjustments in the sub-second area are proven to
 work quite well. 

It's implemented in chronyd versions 2.0 and up, for what it's worth.
The required config directive is leapsecmode slew.

There's a nice blog post explaining how this feature, as well as some
other approaches on how to deal with the leap second, work here:

http://developerblog.redhat.com/2015/06/01/five-different-ways-handle-leap-seconds-ntp/

Tore


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-25 Thread Tony Finch
Damian Menscher via NANOG nanog@nanog.org wrote:

 http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/time-technology-and-leaping-seconds.html
 comes dangerously close to your modest proposal.

Also
http://developerblog.redhat.com/2015/06/01/five-different-ways-handle-leap-seconds-ntp/

Tony.
-- 
f.anthony.n.finch  d...@dotat.at  http://dotat.at/
Southwest Viking: Northwesterly 3 or 4, veering southeasterly 4 or 5 later.
Slight or moderate. Fair. Good.


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-25 Thread Stefan Schlesinger
 On 25 Jun 2015, at 03:14, Damian Menscher via NANOG nanog@nanog.org wrote:
 
 http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/time-technology-and-leaping-seconds.html
 comes dangerously close to your modest proposal.
 
 Damian

I wonder why Google hasn't published the patch yet. Leap smear sounds like the 
sane way to do leap seconds, and it would't break software at all, because time 
adjustments in the sub-second area are proven to work quite well. 

Btw. there seem to be a couple of public Google timeservers, I wonder whether 
could just sync time from there to get leap smearing. 

time[1-4].google.com

Also this update looks like it would smoothen the process:

https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2015-1159.html
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1214752

-Stefan

Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-25 Thread Damian Menscher via NANOG
On Wed, Jun 24, 2015 at 9:48 PM, Stefan Schlesinger s...@ono.at wrote:

  On 25 Jun 2015, at 03:14, Damian Menscher via NANOG nanog@nanog.org
 wrote:
 
 
 http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/time-technology-and-leaping-seconds.html
  comes dangerously close to your modest proposal.

 I wonder why Google hasn't published the patch yet. Leap smear sounds like
 the sane way to do leap seconds, and it would't break software at all,
 because time adjustments in the sub-second area are proven to work quite
 well.

 Btw. there seem to be a couple of public Google timeservers, I wonder
 whether could just sync time from there to get leap smearing.


I'd be cautious about that approach.  I don't think they've been advertised
for public use, so they could go away without notice.  Also, definitely
don't mix them with normal servers, as that would just confuse your clocks
(which might smear *and* leap or something equally insane).

Damian


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-24 Thread Tore Anderson
* Harlan Stenn st...@ntp.org

 Matthew Huff writes:
  A backward step is a known issue and something that people are more
  comfortable dealing with as it can happen on any machine with a
  noisy clock crystal.
 
 A clock crystal has to be REALLY bad for ntpd to need to step the
 clock.
 
  Having 61 seconds in a minute or 86401 seconds in a day is a
  different story.
 
 Yeah, leap years suck too.
 
 And those jumps around daylight savings time.

Hi Harlan,

Leap years and DST ladjustments have never caused us any major
issues. It seems these code paths are well tested and work fine.

The leap second in 2012 however ... total and utter carnage.
Application servers, databases, etc. falling over like dominoes. All
hands on deck in the middle of the night to clean up. It took days
before we stopped finding broken stuff.

Maybe all the bugs from 2012 have been fixed. Maybe they haven't. Maybe
new ones have been introduced. I'm not terribly optimistic. One example
I'm aware of: Cisco Nexus 5010/5020 switches need software that was
released as late as 29th of April this year in order to be immune to
the crashburn leap second bug CSCub38654. The official «Cisco
Suggested release based on software quality, stability and longevity»
is older. Go figure.

In any case, we're certainly not going to risk it. So our plan is to
disconnect our local stratum-2s from their upstreams on June 29th so
they (and more crucially, their downstream clients) remain oblivious to
the leap second. Come July 1st, we'll reconnect them. The clients'
clocks will be 1s (plus any drift) off at that point, but as we're
running ntpd with the -x option, that shouldn't cause backwards
stepping. Running with slightly incorrect clocks for a few days is a
small price to pay to avoid a repeat of 2012's mayhem.

Tore


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-24 Thread Nick Hilliard
On 24/06/2015 04:33, Harlan Stenn wrote:
 A clock crystal has to be REALLY bad for ntpd to need to step the clock.

or really virtual.

Nick




Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-24 Thread Tony Finch
Philip Homburg pch-na...@u-1.phicoh.com wrote:

 For UTC the analog approach would be to keep time in TAI internally and
 convert to UTC when required.

This is much less of a solution than you might hope, because most APIs,
protocols, and data formats require UT. (Usually not UTC but a
representation isomorphic to traditional UT which ignores leap seconds.)

Tony.
-- 
f.anthony.n.finch  d...@dotat.at  http://dotat.at/
Trafalgar: Variable 3 or 4, but northwesterly 4 or 5 in southeast. Slight,
occasionally moderate. Mainly fair. Mainly good.


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-24 Thread Matthew Huff
Yes, the clock has to be bad. Been there, done that, especially early Sun x86 
servers.

Leap years and DST are both things people and developers are aware of outside 
of technology, leap seconds, not so much.

 On Jun 23, 2015, at 11:33 PM, Harlan Stenn st...@ntp.org wrote:
 
 Matthew Huff writes:
 A backward step is a known issue and something that people are more
 comfortable dealing with as it can happen on any machine with a noisy
 clock crystal.
 
 A clock crystal has to be REALLY bad for ntpd to need to step the clock.
 
 Having 61 seconds in a minute or 86401 seconds in a day is a different
 story.
 
 Yeah, leap years suck too.
 
 And those jumps around daylight savings time.
 
 H



Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-24 Thread Philip Homburg
In your letter dated Wed, 24 Jun 2015 08:33:14 +0200 you wrote:
Leap years and DST ladjustments have never caused us any major
issues. It seems these code paths are well tested and work fine.

I seem to remember that they were not tested that well on a certain brand of
mobile devices a few years back...

In any case, we can abstract from time zones and DST by using UTC internally
and then converting to local time in the UI.

For UTC the analog approach would be to keep time in TAI internally and
convert to UTC when required.

There is however a big problem with that. UTC as a time scale is not
predictable. There is no way of computing the number of seconds between 
2000-01-01 00:00 and 2100-01-01 00:00 because that value is undefined.
The net results is that representing, say, 2020-01-01 00:00 as a TAI
timestamp is impossible until about 6 months before that date.

One way forward for people who for some reason feel attached to representing
the rotation of the earth in civil time is to have a scheme for leap second
just like leap years. For example, insert a leap second every 18 months.

And then revise that scheme once a century to cope unexpect changes in the
earth's rotation.

(Or just get rid of them all together and move to a different time zone every 
4000 years).



Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-24 Thread Chris Adams
Once upon a time, Gary E. Miller g...@rellim.com said:
 Depends on what your Stratum-1 is syncronized to.  Some GPS time
 sources pass on the leap indicator to NTP.  For example, the SiRF-3
 GPS, connected by way of gpsd, to ntpd will pass on the leap second.

Yep, my ancient old SVeeSix has been showing the leap second for several
months; the notification it was added to the GPS signal a while back,
either at the start of the year or the start of the quarter (in theory,
leap seconds can be added/removed quarterly).

-- 
Chris Adams c...@cmadams.net


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-24 Thread Philip Homburg
In your letter dated Wed, 24 Jun 2015 14:05:34 +0100 you wrote:
Philip Homburg pch-na...@u-1.phicoh.com wrote:

 For UTC the analog approach would be to keep time in TAI internally and
 convert to UTC when required.

This is much less of a solution than you might hope, because most APIs,
protocols, and data formats require UT. (Usually not UTC but a
representation isomorphic to traditional UT which ignores leap seconds.)

Supporting legacy formats can be annoying. In some cases it would be no
problem. For example NTP. If there is a defined way to convert between TAI
and UTC then converting TAI to NTP timestamps is easy except during an
actual leap second. Which is not really a problem.

Unix systems would probably need a few new system calls to accept time in TAI.

File formats like tar are unlikely to matter much: find a consistent way of
encoding time around the leap second and most likely nobody will care.

In any case, it would be nice if future formats and systems could have a 
sensible time keeping system. 




Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-24 Thread Stephen Satchell

On 06/24/2015 12:44 PM, Matthew Huff wrote:

It looks like the safest thing for us to do is to keep our NTP
servers running and deal with any crashes/issues. That's better than
having to deal with FINRA.


For what it's worth, Red Hat pushed updates to NTP and to TZDATA.  You 
might want to check the documentation to see if the updates include sane 
handling of the leap second.


(I run CentOS 7.1 and Fedora 20, which is where I saw the updates during 
my morning maintenance.)


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-24 Thread Damian Menscher via NANOG
On Mon, Jun 22, 2015 at 7:17 AM, shawn wilson ag4ve...@gmail.com wrote:


  So, what we should do is make clocks move. 9 slower half of the year
 (and then speed back up) so that we're really in line with earth's
 rotational time. I mean we've got the computers to do it (I think most RTC
 only go down to thousandths so it'll still need a little skewing but I'm
 sure we'll manage).

 Ps - if anyone actually does this, I'm going postal.


http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/time-technology-and-leaping-seconds.html
comes dangerously close to your modest proposal.

Damian


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-24 Thread Majdi S. Abbas
On Wed, Jun 24, 2015 at 08:33:14AM +0200, Tore Anderson wrote:
 Leap years and DST ladjustments have never caused us any major
 issues. It seems these code paths are well tested and work fine.

I've seen quite a few people that for whatever reason insist
on running systems in local time zones struggle with the DST reverse
step.  It's not nearly as much of a non-issue as you claim.

 The leap second in 2012 however ... total and utter carnage.
 Application servers, databases, etc. falling over like dominoes. All
 hands on deck in the middle of the night to clean up. It took days
 before we stopped finding broken stuff.

Total and utter carnage is a bit of a stretch.  Linux hosts
that ran applications dependant on nanosleeps needed reboots.  Note 
that this wasn't an issue in 2009, because the poorly tested change in
question hadn't yet been made to the Linux kernel.

(Even in 2012, my personal hosts, running a different operating
system sailed through it just fine.)

At any time, you might have a bad operational day for any number
of reasons.  Sure, that one was annoying, but to my knowledge nobody
died, and a lot of hosts that probably needed one anyway got a reboot.
Certainly, lately, I've seen a lot of Linux hosts rebooted more than
once for security patching.  #opslife?

Cheers,

--msa


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-24 Thread Chris Adams
Once upon a time, Majdi S. Abbas m...@latt.net said:
   Total and utter carnage is a bit of a stretch.  Linux hosts
 that ran applications dependant on nanosleeps needed reboots.  Note 
 that this wasn't an issue in 2009, because the poorly tested change in
 question hadn't yet been made to the Linux kernel.

In 2009, there was a different problem.  If the system was under
sufficient kernel-related load (such as disk I/O), the kernel's attempt
to print an informational message that a leap second had been added
caused a kernel deadlock, immediately killing the system.

I don't remember any widespread Linux-related leap second issues before
that though.
-- 
Chris Adams c...@cmadams.net


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-24 Thread Tore Anderson
* Majdi S. Abbas

 On Wed, Jun 24, 2015 at 08:33:14AM +0200, Tore Anderson wrote:
  Leap years and DST ladjustments have never caused us any major
  issues. It seems these code paths are well tested and work fine.
 
   I've seen quite a few people that for whatever reason insist
 on running systems in local time zones struggle with the DST reverse
 step.  It's not nearly as much of a non-issue as you claim.

Read again, and note the word us. I am describing my and my
employer's experience with past DST changes and leap years, and those
have indeed been completely uneventful.

YMMV.

  The leap second in 2012 however ... total and utter carnage.
  Application servers, databases, etc. falling over like dominoes. All
  hands on deck in the middle of the night to clean up. It took days
  before we stopped finding broken stuff.
 
   Total and utter carnage is a bit of a stretch.

As above, I am speaking only about how the 2012 leap second went down
in our infrastructure. I stand by how I described the event.

Again, YMMV. If you plan on let your infrastructure deal with the
upcoming leap second head-on, I wish you the best of luck. Hopefully
all the bugs from 2012 have been fixed. I, however, certainly have no
intention of being the one to find out otherwise.

Tore


RE: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-24 Thread Matthew Huff
That won't work. Being internally sync'ed isn't good enough for FINRA. All the 
machines must be synced to an external accurate source at least once per 
trading day.

Our plan is to disable our two stratum 1 servers, and our 3 stratum 2 servers 
before the leap second turnover, but to be 100% safe we would need to do that 
24 hours before, but that would be a violation of FINRA regulations. 

It looks like the safest thing for us to do is to keep our NTP servers running 
and deal with any crashes/issues. That's better than having to deal with FINRA.



Matthew Huff | 1 Manhattanville Rd
Director of Operations   | Purchase, NY 10577
OTA Management LLC   | Phone: 914-460-4039
aim: matthewbhuff    | Fax:   914-694-5669

-Original Message-
From: Tore Anderson [mailto:t...@fud.no] 
Sent: Wednesday, June 24, 2015 3:26 PM
To: Matthew Huff
Cc: nanog2
Subject: Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

* Matthew Huff

 I saw that, but it says the bits are set before 23:59 on the day of
 insertion, but I was hoping that I could shut it down later than
 23:59:59 of the previous day (8pm EST). The reason is FINRA
 regulations. We have to have the time synced once per trading day
 before the open according to the regulations.

Again AIUI, and I'm no NTP expert so I hope someone corrects me if I'm
wrong:

If you don't configure the leapfile ntpd option, the Leap
Indicator flag will flow down to your servers from the stratum-1s
servers you're synchronising from (directly or indirectly).

So what I think you could do, is to on the 29th remove all your
upstream servers from your NTP server's config, and set fudge
127.127.1.0 stratum 3 or something like that so that clients will
still want to sync to it. At that point, your NTP server's clock chip
will be the reference clock, which might be drift-prone. To work around
that, you could at 8pm on the 30th stop ntpd, manually sync the system
clock with ntpdate, and start ntpd again. That should keep your NTP
server's clock reasonably synchronised, that provides your clients with
(a Leap Indicator-free) NTP service.

I make no guarantees that the above will work the way I think it will,
though... Try it at your own risk.

Tore


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-24 Thread Tore Anderson
* Matthew Huff

 Does anyone know what the latest that we can run our NTP servers and
 not distribute the LEAP_SECOND flag to the NTP clients?

From http://support.ntp.org/bin/view/Support/NTPRelatedDefinitions:

  Leap Indicator

This is a two-bit code warning of an impending leap second to be
inserted in the NTP timescale. The bits are set before 23:59 on the
day of insertion and reset after 00:00 on the following day. This
causes the number of seconds (rollover interval) in the day of
insertion to be increased or decreased by one. 

So the answer to your question is, AIUI, 2015-06-29 23:59:59.

Tore


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-24 Thread Matthew Huff
Does anyone know what the latest that we can run our NTP servers and not 
distribute the LEAP_SECOND flag to the NTP clients?


 On Jun 24, 2015, at 2:33 PM, Tore Anderson t...@fud.no wrote:
 
 * Majdi S. Abbas
 
 On Wed, Jun 24, 2015 at 08:33:14AM +0200, Tore Anderson wrote:
 Leap years and DST ladjustments have never caused us any major
 issues. It seems these code paths are well tested and work fine.
 
  I've seen quite a few people that for whatever reason insist
 on running systems in local time zones struggle with the DST reverse
 step.  It's not nearly as much of a non-issue as you claim.
 
 Read again, and note the word us. I am describing my and my
 employer's experience with past DST changes and leap years, and those
 have indeed been completely uneventful.
 
 YMMV.
 
 The leap second in 2012 however ... total and utter carnage.
 Application servers, databases, etc. falling over like dominoes. All
 hands on deck in the middle of the night to clean up. It took days
 before we stopped finding broken stuff.
 
  Total and utter carnage is a bit of a stretch.
 
 As above, I am speaking only about how the 2012 leap second went down
 in our infrastructure. I stand by how I described the event.
 
 Again, YMMV. If you plan on let your infrastructure deal with the
 upcoming leap second head-on, I wish you the best of luck. Hopefully
 all the bugs from 2012 have been fixed. I, however, certainly have no
 intention of being the one to find out otherwise.
 
 Tore



RE: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-24 Thread Matthew Huff
I saw that, but it says the bits are set before 23:59 on the day of 
insertion, but I was hoping that I could shut it down later than 23:59:59 of 
the previous day (8pm EST). The reason is FINRA regulations. We have to have 
the time synced once per trading day before the open according to the 
regulations. 

We could manually run ntpdate on 100+ servers including 50+ windows servers, 
but that's not a great solution.



Matthew Huff | 1 Manhattanville Rd
Director of Operations   | Purchase, NY 10577
OTA Management LLC   | Phone: 914-460-4039
aim: matthewbhuff    | Fax:   914-694-5669

-Original Message-
From: Tore Anderson [mailto:t...@fud.no] 
Sent: Wednesday, June 24, 2015 3:07 PM
To: Matthew Huff
Cc: nanog2
Subject: Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

* Matthew Huff

 Does anyone know what the latest that we can run our NTP servers and
 not distribute the LEAP_SECOND flag to the NTP clients?

From http://support.ntp.org/bin/view/Support/NTPRelatedDefinitions:

  Leap Indicator

This is a two-bit code warning of an impending leap second to be
inserted in the NTP timescale. The bits are set before 23:59 on the
day of insertion and reset after 00:00 on the following day. This
causes the number of seconds (rollover interval) in the day of
insertion to be increased or decreased by one. 

So the answer to your question is, AIUI, 2015-06-29 23:59:59.

Tore


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-24 Thread Tore Anderson
* Matthew Huff

 I saw that, but it says the bits are set before 23:59 on the day of
 insertion, but I was hoping that I could shut it down later than
 23:59:59 of the previous day (8pm EST). The reason is FINRA
 regulations. We have to have the time synced once per trading day
 before the open according to the regulations.

Again AIUI, and I'm no NTP expert so I hope someone corrects me if I'm
wrong:

If you don't configure the leapfile ntpd option, the Leap
Indicator flag will flow down to your servers from the stratum-1s
servers you're synchronising from (directly or indirectly).

So what I think you could do, is to on the 29th remove all your
upstream servers from your NTP server's config, and set fudge
127.127.1.0 stratum 3 or something like that so that clients will
still want to sync to it. At that point, your NTP server's clock chip
will be the reference clock, which might be drift-prone. To work around
that, you could at 8pm on the 30th stop ntpd, manually sync the system
clock with ntpdate, and start ntpd again. That should keep your NTP
server's clock reasonably synchronised, that provides your clients with
(a Leap Indicator-free) NTP service.

I make no guarantees that the above will work the way I think it will,
though... Try it at your own risk.

Tore


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-24 Thread Tore Anderson
* Matthew Huff

 That won't work. Being internally sync'ed isn't good enough for
 FINRA. All the machines must be synced to an external accurate source
 at least once per trading day.

That was why I proposed to ntpdate on your (upstream-free since the
29th) NTP server(s) sometime on the 30th. That would synchronise its
local clock with an external accurate source, without learning the Leap
Indicator.

 Our plan is to disable our two stratum 1 servers, and our 3 stratum 2
 servers before the leap second turnover, but to be 100% safe we would
 need to do that 24 hours before, but that would be a violation of
 FINRA regulations.

If you run your own straum-1 servers, can't you just opt not to
configure leapfile? Assuming your own organisation is the only user
of those servers, that is (certainly don't do that if it's a public
server). After the leap second has passed, you can proceed to correct
things. Your clients will then be 1s ahead of correct time, and will
need to step/slew their clocks to get in sync. But maybe that's OK as
far as FINRA's concerned...

 It looks like the safest thing for us to do is to keep our NTP
 servers running and deal with any crashes/issues. That's better than
 having to deal with FINRA.

Maybe. I have no experience with FINRA. :-)

Tore


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-24 Thread Gary E. Miller
Yo Tore!

On Wed, 24 Jun 2015 21:57:28 +0200
Tore Anderson t...@fud.no wrote:

 If you run your own straum-1 servers, can't you just opt not to
 configure leapfile?

Depends on what your Stratum-1 is syncronized to.  Some GPS time
sources pass on the leap indicator to NTP.  For example, the SiRF-3
GPS, connected by way of gpsd, to ntpd will pass on the leap second.

At least in theory.  :-)

RGDS
GARY
---
Gary E. Miller Rellim 109 NW Wilmington Ave., Suite E, Bend, OR 97703
g...@rellim.com  Tel:+1(541)382-8588


pgpZSFURiKdAg.pgp
Description: OpenPGP digital signature


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-23 Thread Jared Mauch

 On Jun 22, 2015, at 7:06 PM, Harlan Stenn st...@ntp.org wrote:
 
 Time going backwards is deadly to a number of applications.
 
 But apparently not to applications you care about.

Oh it is a problem, and most handle it very ungracefully, such as dovecot which 
just dies:

http://wiki.dovecot.org/TimeMovedBackwards

The issue is also most people are used to using rc.local or rc.* type scripts 
to spawn a daemon which leads to the next major sysadmin/developer problem with 
is handling error cases improperly or not at all.  (86401 is perhaps and error 
case that people should test for).

- Jared

Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-23 Thread Jared Mauch

 On Jun 23, 2015, at 1:23 PM, shawn wilson ag4ve...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 NTP causes jumps - not skews, right?

ntpdate jumps, ntpd will try to make small adjustments within a range unless -x 
is specified.  Many operating systems have -x as a default.

- Jared



Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-23 Thread shawn wilson
On Jun 23, 2015 6:26 AM, Nick Hilliard n...@foobar.org wrote:



 Blocking NTP at the NTP edge will probably work fine for most situations.
 Bear in mind that your NTP edge is not necessarily the same as your
network
 edge.  E.g. you might have internal GPS / radio sources which could
 unexpectedly inject the leap second.  The larger the network, the more
 likely this is to happen.  Most organisations have network fossils and ntp
 is an excellent source of these.  I.e. systems which work away for years
 without any problems before one day accidentally triggering meltdown
 because some developer didn't understand the subtleties of clock
monotonicity.


NTP causes jumps - not skews, right?


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-23 Thread Nick Hilliard
On 23/06/2015 18:23, shawn wilson wrote:
 NTP causes jumps - not skews, right?

this is implementation dependent.  For normal clock differences on ntpd,
if you start it with the -x parameter, it will always slew and never step.
 If you start ntpd without the -x parameter, if the calculated correct time
after slewing is out by  128ms relative to other ntp servers, then after
900 seconds, it will step to the correct time.

However in the case of leap seconds, if the operating system implements ntp
kernel discipline, then the ntp server will immediately step by the leap
second (forwards or backwards), as soon as it receives the leap second
notification.  It does this on the basis that the kernel supports leap
seconds, therefore it's probably the right thing to do.

Nick


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-23 Thread Harlan Stenn
Matthew Huff writes:
 A backward step is a known issue and something that people are more
 comfortable dealing with as it can happen on any machine with a noisy
 clock crystal.

A clock crystal has to be REALLY bad for ntpd to need to step the clock.

 Having 61 seconds in a minute or 86401 seconds in a day is a different
 story.

Yeah, leap years suck too.

And those jumps around daylight savings time.

H


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-23 Thread Mel Beckman
Harlan,

Why should your head explode? Possibly you’re overthinking the problem.  And 
there is no reason (or simple way I can envision) to test my plan, as you 
advise, in advance. I will just block NTP in my border router temporarily. No 
need to make a mountain out of this molehill. Cisco, and many other NTP client 
gear vendors, recommend this approach, and they’ve published extensive research 
on the matter.

 -mel 

 On Jun 23, 2015, at 12:46 AM, Harlan Stenn st...@ntp.org wrote:
 
 This stuff can make my head explode.
 
 When a leap second is added, like on 30 June 2015 at the last second of
 the day, POSIX insists that the day still have 86400 seconds in it.
 This makes the day longer by one second, so time has to either slow down
 or move backwards.
 
 The dumb way to do this is to step the clock back by 1 second at the
 instant before the stroke of midnight.
 
 The allegedly better way to do this would be to stop the clock a bit
 before midnight, and hold the time for 1 second.  To continue providing
 monotonic time, every time somebody says what time is it during that
 holding period one would want to bump the time by the smallest amount
 possible, usually 1 nanosecond (assuming the kernel keeps time in
 nanoseconds).
 
 Ideally you wouldn't want to add enough nanoseconds to cause the clock
 to roll over into the next day too early.
 
 But apparently nobody has implemented this, even though Prof. Mills
 described it in RFC-i-forget about 20 years ago.
 
 This is mostly because POSIX deals with absolute time and not relative
 time.
 
 In the unlikely event of a leap second deletion, there would be no
 23:59:59, so when the clock is about to strike 23:59:59 it's OK to add
 an extra second to the clock to effectively have the time jump from
 23:59:58 to 00:00:00.  This is still a monotonic increment in time.
 
 Whatever you decide to do, I recommend you actually test it out to see
 if it behaves the way you think it will.  You have a whole week still.
 
 H



Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-23 Thread Mel Beckman
Harlan,

Help me understand why there is a serious risk of going back in time. I 
acknowledge that there is a remote chance of a backstep, but the probability 
seems very low.

Suppose I disable my NTP service five minutes before a positive leap second 
occurs, so that no server in my network can query it. These servers will then 
run on their own internal clocks. Then, five minutes after the leap second, I 
re-engage NTP. Assuming a high degree of local oscillator fidelity, imagine the 
clock drift is zero. The result is that NTP will report one second older than 
the time currently in my server, i.e. exactly five minutes after the 23:59:60 
leap second.

Thus even systems, such as Unix, where 23:59:60 does not exist in the UTC 
implementation, the timestamp the server sees from NTP is not the potentially 
code-crashing 23:59:60, but a perfectly rational 00:05:01. This is what my 
server’s NTP client compares with its internal clock of 00:04:59. NTP's target 
time is in the future, so there is no risk of going back in time. NTP gradually 
increments the local time to converge on NTP’s time.

In the alternative case of a negative leap second, following the NTP clock 
discipline algorithm, the NTP client amortizes the one-second reverse jump, 
specifically in order to avoid setting the clock backward: the local time will 
be gradually adjusted again via the clock discipline algorithm until local and 
NTP times converge. Although the offset is more than the 125ms step threshold, 
stepping a full one second backward is still statistically unlikely.

It may be that I’ve misread the NTP specification in RPC-5905 and its 
antecedents, as well as the leap second historical records of problems. But the 
disabling-NTP-prior-to-leap workaround seems to bypass all the documented 
leap-second live lock hangs and other bugs..

 -mel


On Jun 22, 2015, at 4:06 PM, Harlan Stenn st...@ntp.orgmailto:st...@ntp.org 
wrote:

Doug Barton writes:
This is an OpenPGP/MIME signed message (RFC 4880 and 3156)
On 6/19/15 2:58 PM, Harlan Stenn wrote:
Bad idea.

When restarting ntpd your clocks will likely be off by a second,
which will cause a backward step, which will force the problem you
claim to be avoiding.

There are plenty of ways to solve this problem, and you just get to
choose what you want to risk/pay.

You misunderstand the problem. :) The problem is not clock skips
backward one second, because most of the time that's not what
happens.  The problem is that most software does not handle it well
when the clock ticks ... :59 :60 :00 instead of ticking directly from
:59 to :00.

POSIX NEVER shows :60.

THAT problem is avoided by temporarily turning off NTP and then
turning it back on again when the coast is clear. Most software can
handle the clock skips forward or backwards one second problem
fairly robustly,= and as Baldur pointed out by doing the reset in a
controlled manner you greatly reduce your overall risk.

Time going backwards is deadly to a number of applications.

But apparently not to applications you care about.

You're also not doing anything where somebody is going to get sued
because a timestamp is off by a second.  There are people for whom this
is a very real risk.

H



Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-23 Thread Harlan Stenn
This stuff can make my head explode.

When a leap second is added, like on 30 June 2015 at the last second of
the day, POSIX insists that the day still have 86400 seconds in it.
This makes the day longer by one second, so time has to either slow down
or move backwards.

The dumb way to do this is to step the clock back by 1 second at the
instant before the stroke of midnight.

The allegedly better way to do this would be to stop the clock a bit
before midnight, and hold the time for 1 second.  To continue providing
monotonic time, every time somebody says what time is it during that
holding period one would want to bump the time by the smallest amount
possible, usually 1 nanosecond (assuming the kernel keeps time in
nanoseconds).

Ideally you wouldn't want to add enough nanoseconds to cause the clock
to roll over into the next day too early.

But apparently nobody has implemented this, even though Prof. Mills
described it in RFC-i-forget about 20 years ago.

This is mostly because POSIX deals with absolute time and not relative
time.

In the unlikely event of a leap second deletion, there would be no
23:59:59, so when the clock is about to strike 23:59:59 it's OK to add
an extra second to the clock to effectively have the time jump from
23:59:58 to 00:00:00.  This is still a monotonic increment in time.

Whatever you decide to do, I recommend you actually test it out to see
if it behaves the way you think it will.  You have a whole week still.

H


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-23 Thread Nick Hilliard
On 23/06/2015 10:25, Mel Beckman wrote:
 Why should your head explode? Possibly you’re overthinking the problem.

The problems don't relate to Harlan overthinking the problem.  They relate
to developers underthinking the problem and assuming that all clocks are
monotonic and that certain rules apply, e.g. that there are 60 seconds in a
minute, 86400 seconds in a day and so forth.

Mostly applications are not time sensitive, but sometimes they are. When
they are, and when the developer assumes something which isn't true,
unexpected things might happen.  assert()s can be triggered, time
synchronisation lost with third party applications, unexpected and untested
code paths could be used, etc.

Blocking NTP at the NTP edge will probably work fine for most situations.
Bear in mind that your NTP edge is not necessarily the same as your network
edge.  E.g. you might have internal GPS / radio sources which could
unexpectedly inject the leap second.  The larger the network, the more
likely this is to happen.  Most organisations have network fossils and ntp
is an excellent source of these.  I.e. systems which work away for years
without any problems before one day accidentally triggering meltdown
because some developer didn't understand the subtleties of clock monotonicity.

Nick



Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-23 Thread Jay Ashworth
- Original Message -
 From: Harlan Stenn st...@ntp.org

  You misunderstand the problem. :) The problem is not clock skips
  backward one second, because most of the time that's not what
  happens. The problem is that most software does not handle it well
  when the clock ticks ... :59 :60 :00 instead of ticking directly
  from
  :59 to :00.
 
 POSIX NEVER shows :60.

Then I hope POSIX does not claim to represent UTC, because UTC does, no?

(IE: somewhere between a bit and a lot more expansion was called for
there; most of us don't have ntp.org email addresses.  :-)

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth  Baylink   j...@baylink.com
Designer The Things I Think   RFC 2100
Ashworth  Associates   http://www.bcp38.info  2000 Land Rover DII
St Petersburg FL USA  BCP38: Ask For It By Name!   +1 727 647 1274


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-23 Thread Gary E. Miller
Yo Jay!

On Tue, 23 Jun 2015 22:02:50 -0400 (EDT)
Jay Ashworth j...@baylink.com wrote:

 - Original Message -
  From: Harlan Stenn st...@ntp.org
 
   You misunderstand the problem. :) The problem is not clock skips
   backward one second, because most of the time that's not what
   happens. The problem is that most software does not handle it well
   when the clock ticks ... :59 :60 :00 instead of ticking directly
   from
   :59 to :00.
  
  POSIX NEVER shows :60.
 
 Then I hope POSIX does not claim to represent UTC, because UTC does,
 no?

POSIX-1:2001 clearly 61 seeconds in a minute:

The POSIX-1:2001 docs are here:
http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/basedefs/time.h.html

From the Description:

The time.h header shall declare the structure tm, which shall
include at least the following members:

inttm_sec   Seconds [0,60]. 

From the Application Usage:

The range [0,60] for tm_sec allows for the occasional leap second.

From the Rationale:

The range [0,60] seconds allows for positive or negative leap seconds.

But, from the section on Seconds Since the Epoch

http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/basedefs/xbd_chap04.html#tag_04_14

POSIX seconds is defined as:

tm_sec + tm_min*60 + tm_hour*3600 + tm_yday*86400 +
(tm_year-70)*31536000 + ((tm_year-69)/4)*86400 -
((tm_year-1)/100)*86400 + ((tm_year+299)/400)*86400

Summed up with:

The relationship between the actual time of day and the current
value for seconds since the Epoch is unspecified.

Which basically says if you are gonna split hairs on leap seconds
things will be undefined.

RGDS
GARY
---
Gary E. Miller Rellim 109 NW Wilmington Ave., Suite E, Bend, OR 97703
g...@rellim.com  Tel:+1(541)382-8588


pgp7sfNLqXqeR.pgp
Description: OpenPGP digital signature


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-23 Thread Harlan Stenn
shawn wilson writes:
 On Jun 23, 2015 6:26 AM, Nick Hilliard n...@foobar.org wrote:
 
 
 
  Blocking NTP at the NTP edge will probably work fine for most situations.
  Bear in mind that your NTP edge is not necessarily the same as your
 network
  edge.  E.g. you might have internal GPS / radio sources which could
  unexpectedly inject the leap second.  The larger the network, the more
  likely this is to happen.  Most organisations have network fossils and ntp
  is an excellent source of these.  I.e. systems which work away for years
  without any problems before one day accidentally triggering meltdown
  because some developer didn't understand the subtleties of clock
 monotonicity.
 
 
 NTP causes jumps - not skews, right?

Left to its default condition, ntp will step/jump a change in excess of
128msec.

If you want to slew the clock instead, a 1 second correction will take a
little over 33 minutes' time to apply.

I don't understand why people believe that stopping ntpd for a few
minutes while the leap second is applied will help.  If the system clock
keeps good time, it will *still* be about 1 second ahead when ntpd is
restarted, and that will trigger a backward step which is fatal to a
number of applications.

H


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-23 Thread Matthew Huff
A backward step is a known issue and something that people are more comfortable 
dealing with as it can happen on any machine with a noisy clock crystal.

Having 61 seconds in a minute or 86401 seconds in a day is a different story.

 On Jun 23, 2015, at 8:37 PM, Harlan Stenn st...@ntp.org wrote:
 
 shawn wilson writes:
 On Jun 23, 2015 6:26 AM, Nick Hilliard n...@foobar.org wrote:
 
 
 
 Blocking NTP at the NTP edge will probably work fine for most situations.
 Bear in mind that your NTP edge is not necessarily the same as your
 network
 edge.  E.g. you might have internal GPS / radio sources which could
 unexpectedly inject the leap second.  The larger the network, the more
 likely this is to happen.  Most organisations have network fossils and ntp
 is an excellent source of these.  I.e. systems which work away for years
 without any problems before one day accidentally triggering meltdown
 because some developer didn't understand the subtleties of clock
 monotonicity.
 
 
 NTP causes jumps - not skews, right?
 
 Left to its default condition, ntp will step/jump a change in excess of
 128msec.
 
 If you want to slew the clock instead, a 1 second correction will take a
 little over 33 minutes' time to apply.
 
 I don't understand why people believe that stopping ntpd for a few
 minutes while the leap second is applied will help.  If the system clock
 keeps good time, it will *still* be about 1 second ahead when ntpd is
 restarted, and that will trigger a backward step which is fatal to a
 number of applications.
 
 H



Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-22 Thread Harlan Stenn
Tony Finch writes:
 Harlan Stenn st...@ntp.org wrote:
 
  It's a problem with POSIX, not UTC.
 
  UTC is monotonic.
 
 The problems are that UTC is unpredictable, and it breaks the standard
 labelling of points in time that was used for hundreds (arguably
 thousands) of years before 1972.

You mean back when seconds were rubbery, and before the earth's
rotational speed could be easily and accurately measured, or at least
when the wobbles at that level of accuracy became so noticeable that
they could no longer be ignored?

H


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-22 Thread Doug Barton

On 6/19/15 2:58 PM, Harlan Stenn wrote:

Bad idea.

When restarting ntpd your clocks will likely be off by a second, which
will cause a backward step, which will force the problem you claim to be
avoiding.

There are plenty of ways to solve this problem, and you just get to
choose what you want to risk/pay.


You misunderstand the problem. :)  The problem is not clock skips 
backward one second, because most of the time that's not what happens. 
The problem is that most software does not handle it well when the clock 
ticks ... :59 :60 :00 instead of ticking directly from :59 to :00.


THAT problem is avoided by temporarily turning off NTP and then turning 
it back on again when the coast is clear. Most software can handle the 
clock skips forward or backwards one second problem fairly robustly, 
and as Baldur pointed out by doing the reset in a controlled manner you 
greatly reduce your overall risk.


Doug

--
I am conducting an experiment in the efficacy of PGP/MIME signatures. 
This message should be signed. If it is not, or the signature does not 
validate, please let me know how you received this message (direct, or 
to a list) and the mail software you use. Thanks!




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Description: OpenPGP digital signature


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-22 Thread Harlan Stenn
Doug Barton writes:
 This is an OpenPGP/MIME signed message (RFC 4880 and 3156)
 On 6/19/15 2:58 PM, Harlan Stenn wrote:
 Bad idea.

 When restarting ntpd your clocks will likely be off by a second,
 which will cause a backward step, which will force the problem you
 claim to be avoiding.

 There are plenty of ways to solve this problem, and you just get to
 choose what you want to risk/pay.
 
 You misunderstand the problem. :) The problem is not clock skips
 backward one second, because most of the time that's not what
 happens.  The problem is that most software does not handle it well
 when the clock ticks ... :59 :60 :00 instead of ticking directly from
 :59 to :00.

POSIX NEVER shows :60.

 THAT problem is avoided by temporarily turning off NTP and then
 turning it back on again when the coast is clear. Most software can
 handle the clock skips forward or backwards one second problem
 fairly robustly,= and as Baldur pointed out by doing the reset in a
 controlled manner you greatly reduce your overall risk.

Time going backwards is deadly to a number of applications.

But apparently not to applications you care about.

You're also not doing anything where somebody is going to get sued
because a timestamp is off by a second.  There are people for whom this
is a very real risk.

H


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-22 Thread Marshall Eubanks
On Mon, Jun 22, 2015 at 8:44 AM, Stephane Bortzmeyer bortzme...@nic.fr
wrote:

 On Mon, Jun 22, 2015 at 12:38:28PM +,
  Bjoern A. Zeeb bzeeb-li...@lists.zabbadoz.net wrote
  a message of 17 lines which said:

  So we need a new center of the universe and switch to stardate and
  thus solve the 32bit UNIX time problem for real this time?

 Or simply use TAI which is the obvious time reference for Internet
 devices. Using UTC in routers is madness. Routers and Internet servers
 should use TAI internally and use UTC only when communicating with
 humans (the inferior life form which crawls on the Earth surface and
 cares about things like whether the sun is high at noon, for outside
 picnics).




If the Earth's core ever decides to have some real fun and causes there to
be a negative leap second (there is historical precedent for this, albeit
before the existence of UTC and atomic time) there  would be  a minute with
only 59 seconds, and I would expect things to break in new and creative
ways. We live in a relatively narrow slice of time (a few decades) where
this is a possibility, but it is a possibility. (Note that the number of
leap seconds per year has _slowed_ recently, corresponding to a speed up in
the long term averaged rotation of the Earth. If that speed up of the
Earth's rotation were to happen again, negative leap seconds would be
inevitable.)

The drift between the Earth's time and atomic time will just get worse over
longer time frames (see
http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/leapsecs/year2100.html ).  Even if UTC - TAI is
just fixed (i.e., no more leap seconds), that is just pushing the problem
down the road, and our grandkids will have to deal with leap minutes, or
our remoter descendants with leap hours.


It's a problem with POSIX, not UTC.

Yes. I remember this being raised by people at the USNO back in the early
1990's, but there was no interest in changing POSIX. Too much installed
base was the reason stated IIRC.

My opinion is (and has been since the early 90's)  that the computer /
Internet world should just adopt IAT as the time system in use. That is the
best time we have, and it will never have steps. Yes, that means that you
would need something like a time zone file to set your system clock by hand
from local (UTC) time, but, then, we already have to have time zone files.

Regards
Marshall Eubanks


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-22 Thread Alan Buxey
I do feel sorry for you unix/linux users having a problem in year 2038 
fortunately I get another ~ 8 years... my Amiga
gets its first big problem in 2046 ;-)

http://web.archive.org/web/19981203142814/http://www.amiga.com/092098-y2k.html

alan

PS if i get to see the 2078 issue I'll be old enough to fuss about other things 
than a 2 digit date display..and I'm sure if I'm around until 7 February, 2114, 
06:28:16 I'll have more to worry about than an old Amiga finally reaching the 
end of its useful life...unless its actually driving my life support system! ;-)

Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-22 Thread Tony Finch
Harlan Stenn st...@ntp.org wrote:

 It's a problem with POSIX, not UTC.

 UTC is monotonic.

The problems are that UTC is unpredictable, and it breaks the standard
labelling of points in time that was used for hundreds (arguably
thousands) of years before 1972.

Tony.
-- 
f.anthony.n.finch  d...@dotat.at  http://dotat.at/
Irish Sea: Northwesterly 4 or 5, occasionally 6 at first, becoming variable 4.
Slight or moderate. Mainly fair. Good.


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-22 Thread Bjoern A. Zeeb

 On 22 Jun 2015, at 12:27 , Stephane Bortzmeyer bortzme...@nic.fr wrote:
 
 On Mon, Jun 22, 2015 at 01:15:41PM +0100,
 Tony Finch d...@dotat.at wrote 
 a message of 15 lines which said:
 
 The problems are that UTC is unpredictable,
 
 That's because the earth rotation is unpredictable. Any time based on
 this buggy planet's movements will be unpredictable. Let's patch it
 now!

So we need a new center of the universe and switch to stardate and thus solve 
the 32bit UNIX time problem for real this time?




Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-22 Thread Stephane Bortzmeyer
On Mon, Jun 22, 2015 at 01:15:41PM +0100,
 Tony Finch d...@dotat.at wrote 
 a message of 15 lines which said:

 The problems are that UTC is unpredictable,

That's because the earth rotation is unpredictable. Any time based on
this buggy planet's movements will be unpredictable. Let's patch it
now!



Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-22 Thread Stephane Bortzmeyer
On Mon, Jun 22, 2015 at 12:38:28PM +,
 Bjoern A. Zeeb bzeeb-li...@lists.zabbadoz.net wrote 
 a message of 17 lines which said:

 So we need a new center of the universe and switch to stardate and
 thus solve the 32bit UNIX time problem for real this time?

Or simply use TAI which is the obvious time reference for Internet
devices. Using UTC in routers is madness. Routers and Internet servers
should use TAI internally and use UTC only when communicating with
humans (the inferior life form which crawls on the Earth surface and
cares about things like whether the sun is high at noon, for outside
picnics).




Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-22 Thread Tony Finch
Stephane Bortzmeyer bortzme...@nic.fr wrote:

 That's because the earth rotation is unpredictable. Any time based on
 this buggy planet's movements will be unpredictable. Let's patch it
 now!

http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2015-May/022280.html
http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2015-May/022281.html
http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2015-May/022282.html

Tony.
-- 
f.anthony.n.finch  d...@dotat.at  http://dotat.at/
Northwest Faeroes, Southeast Iceland: Northeasterly 3 or 4. Moderate, becoming
mainly slight. Mainly fair. Good, occasionally poor in Southeast Iceland.


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-22 Thread Saku Ytti
On (2015-06-22 14:44 +0200), Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote:

 Or simply use TAI which is the obvious time reference for Internet
 devices. Using UTC in routers is madness. Routers and Internet servers
 should use TAI internally and use UTC only when communicating with
 humans (the inferior life form which crawls on the Earth surface and
 cares about things like whether the sun is high at noon, for outside
 picnics).

I couldn't agree more. But out of curiosity does anyone have scoop why TAI
exists? I believe GPSTIME predates it, which appears analogous to TAI.

-- 
  ++ytti


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-22 Thread Tony Finch
shawn wilson ag4ve...@gmail.com wrote:
 So, what we should do is make clocks move. 9 slower half of the year
 (and then speed back up) so that we're really in line with earth's
 rotational time.

That's how UTC worked in the 1960s.
ftp://maia.usno.navy.mil/ser7/tai-utc.dat

It causes problems for systems that have a tight coupling between time
and frequency - broadcast, cellular, etc.

Tony.
-- 
f.anthony.n.finch  d...@dotat.at  http://dotat.at/
Fair Isle, Southeast Faeroes: Northeasterly 5 or 6 backing northerly 4 or 5.
Moderate, occasionally rough at first. Mainly fair. Good.


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-22 Thread Randy Bush
we can just turn the internet off for an hour until the dust settles.


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-22 Thread shawn wilson
On Mon, Jun 22, 2015, 08:29 Stephane Bortzmeyer bortzme...@nic.fr wrote:

 On Mon, Jun 22, 2015 at 01:15:41PM +0100,
  Tony Finch d...@dotat.at wrote
  a message of 15 lines which said:

  The problems are that UTC is unpredictable,

 That's because the earth rotation is unpredictable. Any time based on
 this buggy planet's movements will be unpredictable. Let's patch it
 now!

 So, what we should do is make clocks move. 9 slower half of the year
(and then speed back up) so that we're really in line with earth's
rotational time. I mean we've got the computers to do it (I think most RTC
only go down to thousandths so it'll still need a little skewing but I'm
sure we'll manage).

Ps - if anyone actually does this, I'm going postal.


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-21 Thread Jay Ashworth
- Original Message -
 From: Jimmy Hess mysi...@gmail.com

 On Sun, Jun 21, 2015 at 1:06 AM, valdis.kletni...@vt.edu wrote:
  On Sat, 20 Jun 2015 19:06:29 -0400, Jay Ashworth said:
 [snip]
  I'll let the perpetrator, Richard Stallman, explain. It was a
  kerfluffle
  regarding whether /bin/du should use units of 1,000 or 1024.
 
  http://karmak.org/archive/2003/01/12-14-99.epl.html
 
 It's not 1024 vs 1000; it's 1024 vs 512.
 
 If it's du or df; the display is supposed to be the number of
 512-Byte blocks.
[ ... ]
 If you set POSIXLY_CORRECT in the environment, they will show in 512
 byte blocks, or the disk sector size in bytes, instead, like they
 are supposed to

Yes, but Valdis' politically correct reference goes to the original
name of the environment variable, which I once knew, but had forgotten,
was POSIX_ME_HARDER.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth  Baylink   j...@baylink.com
Designer The Things I Think   RFC 2100
Ashworth  Associates   http://www.bcp38.info  2000 Land Rover DII
St Petersburg FL USA  BCP38: Ask For It By Name!   +1 727 647 1274


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-21 Thread Jimmy Hess
On Sun, Jun 21, 2015 at 1:06 AM,  valdis.kletni...@vt.edu wrote:
 On Sat, 20 Jun 2015 19:06:29 -0400, Jay Ashworth said:
[snip]
 I'll let the perpetrator, Richard Stallman, explain. It was a kerfluffle
 regarding whether /bin/du should use units of 1,000 or 1024.

 http://karmak.org/archive/2003/01/12-14-99.epl.html

It's not 1024 vs 1000;   it's  1024 vs 512.

If it's  du or df;  the display is supposed to be the number of
512-Byte blocks.

Thankfully,  the  -k  and -g options were added to display  in
Kilobyte or Gigabyte  units which are more human understandable and
familiar.

Some of the GNU utilities play fast and loose on the spec  and default
to 1024-byte blocks.

If you set POSIXLY_CORRECT  in the environment,  they will show in 512
byte blocks,  or the disk sector size in bytes,  instead,like they
are supposed to

-- 
-JH


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-21 Thread Valdis . Kletnieks
On Sat, 20 Jun 2015 19:06:29 -0400, Jay Ashworth said:
 - Original Message -
  From: Valdis Kletnieks valdis.kletni...@vt.edu

  I wonder how many of us are old enough to remember what that environment
  variable *used* to be called before political correctness became
  important.

 There are so many layers in that observation that I'm lost.

 Was posixly-correct a purposeful pun on politically correct, and I've
 missed it all these decades?

 Or was it named something else earlier than that, which wasn't itself
 politically correct?

I'll let the perpetrator, Richard Stallman, explain. It was a kerfluffle
regarding whether /bin/du should use units of 1,000 or 1024.

http://karmak.org/archive/2003/01/12-14-99.epl.html


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Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-20 Thread Harlan Stenn
Mel Beckman writes:
 Harlan,
 
 This is cisco's recommended workaround, the ultimate conclusion of an exhau=
 stive study of all Cisco firmware and after detailed post mortem analysis o=
 f two previous Leap seconds:
 
  https://tools.cisco.com/bugsearch/bug/CSCut33302

Fair enough.  And I've been trying to get Cisco to work with us for very
many years.  They have yet to show any interest.  But they'd be paying
us for that.  We have no leverage with them.

But folks who are paying Cisco for support?  For the number of years
Cisco has been using NTP and for the number of product lines that use
it, they could certainly do better.  I know they were current when I did
the port for the MDS switch line, years ago.
-- 
Harlan Stenn st...@ntp.org
http://networktimefoundation.org - be a member!


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-20 Thread Saku Ytti
On (2015-06-19 21:53 +), Harlan Stenn wrote:

 It's a problem with POSIX, not UTC.
 
 UTC is monotonic.

You're right. Hopefully POSIX will become monotonic next year, by removal of
leaps from UTC.

-- 
  ++ytti


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-20 Thread Jay Ashworth
- Original Message -

 - use the posix-right timezone files

What; not posixly-correct?

Cheers,
-- jr ':-)' a
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth  Baylink   j...@baylink.com
Designer The Things I Think   RFC 2100
Ashworth  Associates   http://www.bcp38.info  2000 Land Rover DII
St Petersburg FL USA  BCP38: Ask For It By Name!   +1 727 647 1274


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-20 Thread Steve Allen
On Sat 2015-06-20T10:48:17 +0300, Saku Ytti hath writ:
 You're right. Hopefully POSIX will become monotonic next year, by removal of
 leaps from UTC.

Probably not.  The ITU-R has outlined four methods for this issue, see
http://www.acma.gov.au/Industry/Spectrum/Spectrum-planning/International-planning-ITU-and-other-international-planning-bodies/wrc-15-agenda-item-114
where of method A1, A2, B, C1, C2, and D not all of them remove the
leap second from UTC.

In any case, previous draft proposals have all specified a 5 year
interval from deciding to change until the change happens, so we
should plan for 5 more years of leap seconds no matter what.

--
Steve Allen s...@ucolick.org   WGS-84 (GPS)
UCO/Lick Observatory--ISB   Natural Sciences II, Room 165   Lat  +36.99855
1156 High StreetVoice: +1 831 459 3046  Lng -122.06015
Santa Cruz, CA 95064http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/Hgt +250 m


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-20 Thread Harlan Stenn
shawn wilson writes:
 ... I mean letting computers figure out slower earth rotation on the
 fly would seem more accurate than leap seconds anyway. And then all of
 us who do earthly things and would like simpler libraries could live
 in peace.

Really?  Have you looked in to those calculations, and I'm only talking
about the allegedly predictable parts of those calculations, not things
like the jetstream, the circumpolar currents, or earthquakes.

H


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-20 Thread shawn wilson
On Jun 19, 2015 2:05 PM, Saku Ytti s...@ytti.fi wrote:

 On (2015-06-19 13:06 -0400), Jay Ashworth wrote:

 Hey,

  The IERS will be adding a second to time again on my birthday;
 
  2015-06-30T23:59:60

 Hopefully this is last leap second we'll ever see. Non-monotonic time is
an
 abomination and very very few programs measuring passage of time are
correct.
 Even those which are, usually are not portable, most languages do not even
 offer monotonic time in standard libraries.
 Canada, China, England and Germany, shame on you for opposing
leapsecondless
 UTC.

 Next year hopefully GPSTIME. TAI and UTC are the same thing, with
different
 static offset.


Unlikely but here's hoping. I mean letting computers figure out slower
earth rotation on the fly would seem more accurate than leap seconds
anyway. And then all of us who do earthly things and would like simpler
libraries could live in peace.


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-20 Thread shawn wilson
On Sat, Jun 20, 2015, 14:16 Harlan Stenn st...@ntp.org wrote:

 shawn wilson writes:
  ... I mean letting computers figure out slower earth rotation on the
  fly would seem more accurate than leap seconds anyway. And then all of
  us who do earthly things and would like simpler libraries could live
  in peace.

 Really?  Have you looked in to those calculations, and I'm only talking
 about the allegedly predictable parts of those calculations, not things
 like the jetstream, the circumpolar currents, or earthquakes.


Ok, forget that point - AFAIK, the only things that matter wrt time is
agreement on interval/counter and epoch, and stability. Right now we only
have agreement on interval.

So while I'd prefer a consistent epoch and counter, I'll live with whatever
as we have access to board agreement and stability (like this doesn't hit
NANOG every time with uh oh).


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-20 Thread Valdis . Kletnieks
On Sat, 20 Jun 2015 11:32:53 -0400, Jay Ashworth said:
 - Original Message -

  - use the posix-right timezone files

 What; not posixly-correct?

I wonder how many of us are old enough to remember what that environment
variable *used* to be called before political correctness became important.


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Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-20 Thread Jay Ashworth
- Original Message -
 From: Valdis Kletnieks valdis.kletni...@vt.edu

 On Sat, 20 Jun 2015 11:32:53 -0400, Jay Ashworth said:
  - Original Message -
 
   - use the posix-right timezone files
 
  What; not posixly-correct?
 
 I wonder how many of us are old enough to remember what that environment
 variable *used* to be called before political correctness became
 important.

There are so many layers in that observation that I'm lost.

Was posixly-correct a purposeful pun on politically correct, and I've
missed it all these decades?

Or was it named something else earlier than that, which wasn't itself
politically correct?

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth  Baylink   j...@baylink.com
Designer The Things I Think   RFC 2100
Ashworth  Associates   http://www.bcp38.info  2000 Land Rover DII
St Petersburg FL USA  BCP38: Ask For It By Name!   +1 727 647 1274


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-19 Thread Baldur Norddahl
On 19 June 2015 at 23:58, Harlan Stenn st...@ntp.org wrote:

 Bad idea.

 When restarting ntpd your clocks will likely be off by a second, which
 will cause a backward step, which will force the problem you claim to be
 avoiding.


If you are afraid that your routers will crash due to the leapsecond, then
it would help to disable the thing that you think will crash them. Even if
the router crashes when you enable it later on. Because then you can have
one router crash at a time and have it happen in a service window where you
are ready for it. Instead of having all routers in your whole network crash
at exactly the same time.

Regards,

Baldur


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-19 Thread Harlan Stenn
Baldur Norddahl writes:
 On 19 June 2015 at 23:58, Harlan Stenn st...@ntp.org wrote:
 
  Bad idea.
 
  When restarting ntpd your clocks will likely be off by a second, which
  will cause a backward step, which will force the problem you claim to be
  avoiding.
 
 If you are afraid that your routers will crash due to the leapsecond,
 then it would help to disable the thing that you think will crash
 them. Even if the router crashes when you enable it later on. Because
 then you can have one router crash at a time and have it happen in a
 service window where you are ready for it. Instead of having all
 routers in your whole network crash at exactly the same time.

That' seems fair, as long as you turn off the time stuff only on your
routers, and I'm assuming this is on routers that don't have supported
software.

H


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-19 Thread Harlan Stenn
Bad idea.

When restarting ntpd your clocks will likely be off by a second, which
will cause a backward step, which will force the problem you claim to be
avoiding.

There are plenty of ways to solve this problem, and you just get to
choose what you want to risk/pay.
-- 
Harlan Stenn st...@ntp.org
http://networktimefoundation.org - be a member!


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-19 Thread Harlan Stenn
Saku Ytti writes:
 Hopefully this is last leap second we'll ever see. Non-monotonic time
 is an abomination and very very few programs measuring passage of time
 are correct.  Even those which are, usually are not portable, most
 languages do not even offer monotonic time in standard libraries.
 Canada, China, England and Germany, shame on you for opposing
 leapsecondless UTC.

It's a problem with POSIX, not UTC.

UTC is monotonic.

 Next year hopefully GPSTIME. TAI and UTC are the same thing, with different
 static offset.

The General Timestamp API that Network Time Foundation is working on can
solve this problem.  People use different timescales for different
reasons.  The Agile folks like the pigs and chickens analogy: in a
bacon and egg breakfast, the chicken is invested while the pig is
committed.

It's lame for a chicken to dictate to a pig.

It's lame to change an existing Standard.  Leave that one alone and
choose to follow a new/different Standard.

If you don't have a system that can properly handle leapseconds, there
are several solutions to this, including:

- implement DLM's leap second process in the kernel, described over 20
  years ago 
- use the posix-right timezone files
- help Network Time Foundation get the General Timestamp API implemented
  and deployed, which will let folks use whatever timescale they want.

-- 
Harlan Stenn st...@ntp.org
http://networktimefoundation.org - be a member!


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-19 Thread Mel Beckman
Harlan,

This is cisco's recommended workaround, the ultimate conclusion of an 
exhaustive study of all Cisco firmware and after detailed post mortem analysis 
of two previous Leap seconds:

 https://tools.cisco.com/bugsearch/bug/CSCut33302

GSS Leap second update
CSCut33302
Description
Symptom:
There are periodic leap second events which can add or delete a second to 
global time.

When the leap second update occurs the GSS might hang and have to be reload or 
the kernel could crash and the GSS would reboot.

Conditions:
The leap second update will be propagated via Network Time Protocol (NTP) or 
via manually setting the clock.

Workaround:
Workaround, Turn off NTP prior to leap second and turn it back on afterward.

Further Problem Description:
None

Or, in the immortal words of The IT Crowd: Turn it off and on again!

If you run non-IOS server software of such fragility that it can't tolerate 
time slewing, just shut it down and power back up after The Leap.

That's what your competitors are doing :)

 -mel beckman

On Jun 19, 2015, at 4:15 PM, Harlan Stenn st...@ntp.orgmailto:st...@ntp.org 
wrote:

Baldur Norddahl writes:
On 19 June 2015 at 23:58, Harlan Stenn st...@ntp.orgmailto:st...@ntp.org 
wrote:

Bad idea.

When restarting ntpd your clocks will likely be off by a second, which
will cause a backward step, which will force the problem you claim to be
avoiding.

If you are afraid that your routers will crash due to the leapsecond,
then it would help to disable the thing that you think will crash
them. Even if the router crashes when you enable it later on. Because
then you can have one router crash at a time and have it happen in a
service window where you are ready for it. Instead of having all
routers in your whole network crash at exactly the same time.

That' seems fair, as long as you turn off the time stuff only on your
routers, and I'm assuming this is on routers that don't have supported
software.

H


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-19 Thread Saku Ytti
On (2015-06-19 13:06 -0400), Jay Ashworth wrote:

Hey,

 The IERS will be adding a second to time again on my birthday; 
 
 2015-06-30T23:59:60

Hopefully this is last leap second we'll ever see. Non-monotonic time is an
abomination and very very few programs measuring passage of time are correct.
Even those which are, usually are not portable, most languages do not even
offer monotonic time in standard libraries.
Canada, China, England and Germany, shame on you for opposing leapsecondless
UTC.

Next year hopefully GPSTIME. TAI and UTC are the same thing, with different
static offset.

-- 
  ++ytti


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-19 Thread Alexander Maassen
So you need to wait one more second before you may pop the bottle? :)

On Fri, June 19, 2015 7:06 pm, Jay Ashworth wrote:
 The IERS will be adding a second to time again on my birthday;

 2015-06-30T23:59:59
 2015-06-30T23:59:60
 2015-07-01T00:00:00

 Have fun, everyone.  :-)

 Cheers,
 -- jra

 --
 Jay R. Ashworth  Baylink
 j...@baylink.com
 Designer The Things I Think   RFC
 2100
 Ashworth  Associates   http://www.bcp38.info  2000 Land Rover
 DII
 St Petersburg FL USA  BCP38: Ask For It By Name!   +1 727 647
 1274





Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-19 Thread Måns Nilsson
Subject: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND Date: Fri, Jun 19, 2015 at 01:06:22PM -0400 
Quoting Jay Ashworth (j...@baylink.com):
 The IERS will be adding a second to time again on my birthday; 

This time around there are a number of Vendor C devices that will fail
in spectacular ways if not upgraded with a pretty new release -- Nexus
and ASR1K being the two most interesting among those I've reviewed. 

http://www.cisco.com/web/about/doing_business/leap-second.html#~ProductInformation

-- 
Måns Nilsson primary/secondary/besserwisser/machina
MN-1334-RIPE +46 705 989668
I'd like some JUNK FOOD ... and then I want to be ALONE --


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Description: Digital signature


Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-19 Thread Mel Beckman
The universal workaround is to simply disable NTP on your devices sometime on 
Leap-Second eave. This will let the clocks free-run over the one-second push, 
an event of which they will be blissfully ignorant. When you re-enable NTP 
after The Leap, normal, non-destructive, NTP convergence will occur.

Better, if you have a master NTP site clock, you need only disable it’s 
upstream NTP feed to isolate all the subsidiary devices. If you don’t have such 
a master clock, this is an excellent time to set one up one. I have found the 
Time Machines TM1000A GPS time server very inexpensive and super reliable:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=0N6-001Y-7 

 -mel

 On Jun 19, 2015, at 11:08 AM, Måns Nilsson mansa...@besserwisser.org wrote:
 
 Subject: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND Date: Fri, Jun 19, 2015 at 01:06:22PM -0400 
 Quoting Jay Ashworth (j...@baylink.com):
 The IERS will be adding a second to time again on my birthday; 
 
 This time around there are a number of Vendor C devices that will fail
 in spectacular ways if not upgraded with a pretty new release -- Nexus
 and ASR1K being the two most interesting among those I've reviewed. 
 
 http://www.cisco.com/web/about/doing_business/leap-second.html#~ProductInformation
 
 -- 
 Måns Nilsson primary/secondary/besserwisser/machina
 MN-1334-RIPE +46 705 989668
 I'd like some JUNK FOOD ... and then I want to be ALONE --



Re: REMINDER: LEAP SECOND

2015-06-19 Thread Majdi S. Abbas
On Fri, Jun 19, 2015 at 06:29:34PM +, Mel Beckman wrote:
 The universal workaround is to simply disable NTP on your devices sometime 
 on Leap-Second eave. This will let the clocks free-run over the one-second 
 push, an event of which they will be blissfully ignorant. When you re-enable 
 NTP after The Leap, normal, non-destructive, NTP convergence will occur.

randyI encourage all my competitors to use this
approach./randy

If you're more than 128 ms off when NTP is flipped back on, it
will still probably step the clock, then start slewing it.  So you've
skipped the leap per se, but your clocks will still jump forward quite
a bit.

This might isolate you from any leap second related failures,
but it does not protect you against the system clock being stepped.
If the leap pending information data persists, you might not even be
isolated from any leap second failures.  You could manage to upset
the system clock even more.

Are your time servers correctly armed for the leap?

 Better, if you have a master NTP site clock, you need only disable it’s 
 upstream NTP feed to isolate all the subsidiary devices. If you don’t 
 have such a master clock, this is an excellent time to set one up one. 
 I have found the Time Machines TM1000A GPS time server very inexpensive 
 and super reliable:
 
 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=0N6-001Y-7 

$20 says that doesn't leap correctly.  A lot of the inexpensive
units appear to be using NMEA speaking GPS modules, and there's no real way 
to get leap information out of them.  Many of them may ignore the
timestamps and just use the PPS, in which case they may persist a second
behind the world for quite some time.

--msa


Re: REMINDER: Leap Second

2015-01-26 Thread Barry Shein

I'm pretty sure University College, London (UCL) had a 360/195 on the
net in the late 1970s. I remember it had open login to I guess it was
TSO? I'd play with it but couldn't really figure out anything
interesting to do lacking all documentation and by and large
motivation other than it was kind of cool in like 1978 to be typing at
a computer in London even if it was just saying do something or go
away! I guess you had to be there.

-Barry Shein

The World  | b...@theworld.com   | http://www.TheWorld.com
Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 800-THE-WRLD| Dial-Up: US, PR, Canada
Software Tool  Die| Public Access Internet | SINCE 1989 *oo*


On January 26, 2015 at 03:36 bar...@databus.com (Barney Wolff) wrote:
  On Sun, Jan 25, 2015 at 06:42:51PM -0500, TR Shaw wrote:
   
   That made the transformers smaller/cooler and more efficient. I seem to 
   remember a 195 as well but maybe it is just CRS.
  
  Google says the 360/195 did exist.  But my baby was the 360/95,
  where the first megabyte of memory was flat-film at 60ns, which
  made it faster than the 195 for some things.  It was incredibly
  expensive to build - we heard rumors of $30 million in 1967 dollars,
  and sold to NASA at a huge loss, which is why there were only two
  built.  I used to amuse myself by climbing into the flats memory
  cabinet, and was amused again some years later when I could have
  ingested a megabyte without harm.  Ours sat directly above Tom's
  Restaurant, of Seinfeld fame.  Very early climate modeling was done
  on that machine, along with a lot of astrophysics.


Re: REMINDER: Leap Second

2015-01-26 Thread John Levine
Barney Wolff  bar...@databus.com wrote:
On Sun, Jan 25, 2015 at 06:42:51PM -0500, TR Shaw wrote:
 
 That made the transformers smaller/cooler and more efficient. I seem to 
 remember a 195 as well but maybe it
is just CRS.

Google says the 360/195 did exist.  But my baby was the 360/95,
where the first megabyte of memory was flat-film at 60ns, which
made it faster than the 195 for some things. ...

The /95 was a /91 with a megabyte of thin film memory, which was both
much faster than core (120 vs 780 ns cycle time) and much more
expensive (7c rather than 1.6c per bit.)

The /195 was a /91 reimplemented in slightly faster logic with a 54ns
rather than 60ns cycle time, and a cache adapted from the /85.  I can
easily believe that for programs that didn't cache well, the /95 with
the fast memory would be faster.  IBM lost money on all of them and
eventually stopped trying to compete with CDC in that niche.

See alt.folklore.computers (yes, usenet, reports of its death are
premature) for endless discussion of topics like this.

R's,
John


Re: REMINDER: Leap Second

2015-01-26 Thread Barney Wolff
On Sun, Jan 25, 2015 at 06:42:51PM -0500, TR Shaw wrote:
 
 That made the transformers smaller/cooler and more efficient. I seem to 
 remember a 195 as well but maybe it is just CRS.

Google says the 360/195 did exist.  But my baby was the 360/95,
where the first megabyte of memory was flat-film at 60ns, which
made it faster than the 195 for some things.  It was incredibly
expensive to build - we heard rumors of $30 million in 1967 dollars,
and sold to NASA at a huge loss, which is why there were only two
built.  I used to amuse myself by climbing into the flats memory
cabinet, and was amused again some years later when I could have
ingested a megabyte without harm.  Ours sat directly above Tom's
Restaurant, of Seinfeld fame.  Very early climate modeling was done
on that machine, along with a lot of astrophysics.


Re: REMINDER: Leap Second

2015-01-25 Thread Ken Chase
I think devices would likely be fine, unless they're concerned with reconciling
a leap-second updated ntp source and one that's not. Who wins? 

For most NTPs I would guess they're slaves to whatever feed and just 'believe'
whatever they're told. (Sounds like a security hole waiting for high frequency
trader types, q.v.
http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/3/4798542/whats-faster-than-a-light-speed-trade-inside-the-sketchy-world-of
)

Can't we just subscribe to a leapsmeary NTP feed if we care to have no
big leap (I dont mind)? Isnt NIST offering this?

/kc


On Sun, Jan 25, 2015 at 06:01:40PM +0100, Karsten Elfenbein said:
  Hi,
  
  Java had some issues with 100% CPU usage when NTP was running during
  the additional second in 2012.
  http://blog.wpkg.org/2012/07/01/java-leap-second-bug-30-june-1-july-2012-fix/
  
  Google did something different to get the extra second in:
  
http://googleblog.blogspot.de/2011/09/time-technology-and-leaping-seconds.html
  
  Most devices probably don't even know about the leap second coming as
  that would require a firmware upgrade.
  
  
  Karsten
  
  2015-01-25 16:19 GMT+01:00 Mike. the.li...@mgm51.com:
   On 1/25/2015 at 9:37 AM Jay Ashworth wrote:
  
   |This June 30th, 235959UTC will be followed immediately by 235960UTC.
   |
   |What will /your/ devices do?
=
  
  
   I've always wondered why this is such a big issue, and why it's done
   as it is.
  
   In UNIX, for instance, time is measured as the number of seconds
   since the UNIX epoch.  imo, the counting of the number of seconds
   should not be adjusted, unless there's a time warp of some sort.
   The leap second adjustment should be in the display of the time,
   i.e., similar to how time zones are handled.
  
  
   fwiw
  
  
  

-- 
Ken Chase - m...@sizone.org Toronto


Re: REMINDER: Leap Second

2015-01-25 Thread Karsten Elfenbein
Hi,

Java had some issues with 100% CPU usage when NTP was running during
the additional second in 2012.
http://blog.wpkg.org/2012/07/01/java-leap-second-bug-30-june-1-july-2012-fix/

Google did something different to get the extra second in:
http://googleblog.blogspot.de/2011/09/time-technology-and-leaping-seconds.html

Most devices probably don't even know about the leap second coming as
that would require a firmware upgrade.


Karsten

2015-01-25 16:19 GMT+01:00 Mike. the.li...@mgm51.com:
 On 1/25/2015 at 9:37 AM Jay Ashworth wrote:

 |This June 30th, 235959UTC will be followed immediately by 235960UTC.
 |
 |What will /your/ devices do?
  =


 I've always wondered why this is such a big issue, and why it's done
 as it is.

 In UNIX, for instance, time is measured as the number of seconds
 since the UNIX epoch.  imo, the counting of the number of seconds
 should not be adjusted, unless there's a time warp of some sort.
 The leap second adjustment should be in the display of the time,
 i.e., similar to how time zones are handled.


 fwiw





Re: REMINDER: Leap Second

2015-01-25 Thread John Levine
In article 201501251019290550.005c0...@smtp.24cl.home you write:
I've always wondered why this is such a big issue, and why it's done
as it is.

A lot of people don't think the current approach is so great.

In UNIX, for instance, time is measured as the number of seconds
since the UNIX epoch.  imo, the counting of the number of seconds
should not be adjusted, unless there's a time warp of some sort.
The leap second adjustment should be in the display of the time,
i.e., similar to how time zones are handled.

It shares with time zones the problem that you cannot tell what
the UNIX timestamp will be for a particular future time.  If
you want to have something happen at, say, July 2 2025 at 12:00 UTC
you can guess what the timstamp for that will be, but if there's
another leapsecond or two, you'll be wrong.

Life would be a lot easier for everyone except a handful of
astronomers if we forgot about leap seconds and adjusted by a full
minute every couple of centuries.



Re: REMINDER: Leap Second

2015-01-25 Thread Stephen Satchell
On 01/25/2015 10:15 AM, valdis.kletni...@vt.edu wrote:
 It shares another problem - that doing calculations across a boundary is
 difficult. If you have a recurring timer that pops at 23:58:30 on June 30,
 and you want another one in 2 minutes. do you want a timer that the next pop
 is at 00:00:30 - or 00:00:29? The operating system can't tell whether the
 desired semantic is as close to every 120 elapsed seconds as possible or
 as close to the half-minute tick as possible.

I have automation code for a classroom full of Cisco routers, and the
way I deal with that sort of issue is to say that anything that has to
be synchronized to the wall clock uses cron(8), but for actions tied to
a fixed interval I use sleep(3) and let the operating system sort out
the issues, if any.  I did this to sidestep the issues with Daylight
Savings Time (DST) cusps; it also works for leapseconds, as the OS
interval timing is not tied to the real-time clock.

Funny you should mention ticks versus elapsed time.  In every
specification I've written since 1970, I've differentiated between the
two.  I got started doing that because in the computers of that era the
real-time clock was tied to power-line frequency, while the interval
timers were based on counts on a crystal oscillator.  The crystal was
using good for 1000 parts per million, good enough for short intervals.
 The power-line clock was pulled back and forth by the power company as
said company would fine-tune the time so electric clocks would stay at
the right time long-term as the expense of short-term jitter.

Today's computers don't use clocks derived from 50- or 60-hertz
power-line frequency.  The last computer I remember seeing with such a
clock was the IBM System/360.  The System/370 used a motor-generator set
for the power supply, so it had to get its real-time clock time source
another way.


Re: REMINDER: Leap Second

2015-01-25 Thread Barney Wolff
On Sun, Jan 25, 2015 at 02:24:52PM -0800, Stephen Satchell wrote:
 
 Today's computers don't use clocks derived from 50- or 60-hertz
 power-line frequency.  The last computer I remember seeing with such a
 clock was the IBM System/360.  The System/370 used a motor-generator set
 for the power supply, so it had to get its real-time clock time source
 another way.

The 360/95 and /91 also used 400 Hz from a motor/gen.  Water cooled, too.
One of my fondest war stories is when the power was turned off for July 4th
weekend but the water was left on.


Re: REMINDER: Leap Second

2015-01-25 Thread Valdis . Kletnieks
On 25 Jan 2015 17:29:25 +, John Levine said:

 It shares with time zones the problem that you cannot tell what
 the UNIX timestamp will be for a particular future time.  If
 you want to have something happen at, say, July 2 2025 at 12:00 UTC
 you can guess what the timstamp for that will be, but if there's
 another leapsecond or two, you'll be wrong.

It shares another problem - that doing calculations across a boundary is
difficult. If you have a recurring timer that pops at 23:58:30 on June 30,
and you want another one in 2 minutes. do you want a timer that the next pop
is at 00:00:30 - or 00:00:29? The operating system can't tell whether the
desired semantic is as close to every 120 elapsed seconds as possible or
as close to the half-minute tick as possible.

And of course doing interval math across several years where you cross multiple
leap seconds is even more problematic - for some corner cases that have an
endppoint nearmidnight, doing a naive timestamp in seconds +/- 86400 * number
of days can land you on the wrong *day*, with possibly serious consequences...



pgpdwtSqbeJEk.pgp
Description: PGP signature


Re: REMINDER: Leap Second

2015-01-25 Thread Ken Chase
the quote from the GNU coreutils manpages on Date Input Formats:

Our units of temporal measurement, from seconds on up to months, are so 
complicated, asymmetrical and disjunctive so as to make coherent mental 
reckoning in time all but impossible. Indeed, had some tyrannical god contrived 
to enslave our minds to time, to make it all but impossible for us to escape 
subjection to sodden routines and unpleasant surprises, he could hardly have 
done better than handing down our present system. It is like a set of 
trapezoidal building blocks, with no vertical or horizontal surfaces, like a 
language in which the simplest thought demands ornate constructions, useless 
particles and lengthy circumlocutions. Unlike the more successful patterns of 
language and science, which enable us to face experience boldly or at least 
level-headedly, our system of temporal calculation silently and persistently 
encourages our terror of time. ...

 It is as though architects had to measure length in feet, width in meters and 
height in ells; as though basic instruction manuals demanded a knowledge of 
five different languages. It is no wonder then that we often look into our own 
immediate past or future, last Tuesday or a week from Sunday, with feelings of 
helpless confusion.

 -Robert Grudin, Time and the Art of Living. 

http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#Date-input-formats

/kc

On Sun, Jan 25, 2015 at 01:15:27PM -0500, valdis.kletni...@vt.edu said:
  
  And of course doing interval math across several years where you cross 
multiple
  leap seconds is even more problematic - for some corner cases that have an
  endppoint nearmidnight, doing a naive timestamp in seconds +/- 86400 * 
number
  of days can land you on the wrong *day*, with possibly serious 
consequences...
  

/kc
-- 
Ken Chase - m...@sizone.org Toronto


Re: REMINDER: Leap Second

2015-01-25 Thread Mike.
On 1/25/2015 at 9:37 AM Jay Ashworth wrote:

|This June 30th, 235959UTC will be followed immediately by 235960UTC.
|
|What will /your/ devices do?
 =


I've always wondered why this is such a big issue, and why it's done
as it is.

In UNIX, for instance, time is measured as the number of seconds
since the UNIX epoch.  imo, the counting of the number of seconds
should not be adjusted, unless there's a time warp of some sort.
The leap second adjustment should be in the display of the time,
i.e., similar to how time zones are handled.


fwiw





Re: REMINDER: Leap Second

2015-01-25 Thread TR Shaw

On Jan 25, 2015, at 6:06 PM, Barney Wolff bar...@databus.com wrote:

 On Sun, Jan 25, 2015 at 02:24:52PM -0800, Stephen Satchell wrote:
 
 Today's computers don't use clocks derived from 50- or 60-hertz
 power-line frequency.  The last computer I remember seeing with such a
 clock was the IBM System/360.  The System/370 used a motor-generator set
 for the power supply, so it had to get its real-time clock time source
 another way.
 
 The 360/95 and /91 also used 400 Hz from a motor/gen.  Water cooled, too.
 One of my fondest war stories is when the power was turned off for July 4th
 weekend but the water was left on.

That made the transformers smaller/cooler and more efficient. I seem to 
remember a 195 as well but maybe it is just CRS.



Re: REMINDER: Leap Second

2015-01-25 Thread Joe Klein
I spoke on time hacking and ntp 3 years ago at shmoocon.
On Jan 25, 2015 12:28 PM, Ken Chase m...@sizone.org wrote:

 I think devices would likely be fine, unless they're concerned with
 reconciling
 a leap-second updated ntp source and one that's not. Who wins?

 For most NTPs I would guess they're slaves to whatever feed and just
 'believe'
 whatever they're told. (Sounds like a security hole waiting for high
 frequency
 trader types, q.v.

 http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/3/4798542/whats-faster-than-a-light-speed-trade-inside-the-sketchy-world-of
 )

 Can't we just subscribe to a leapsmeary NTP feed if we care to have no
 big leap (I dont mind)? Isnt NIST offering this?

 /kc


 On Sun, Jan 25, 2015 at 06:01:40PM +0100, Karsten Elfenbein said:
   Hi,
   
   Java had some issues with 100% CPU usage when NTP was running during
   the additional second in 2012.
   
 http://blog.wpkg.org/2012/07/01/java-leap-second-bug-30-june-1-july-2012-fix/
   
   Google did something different to get the extra second in:
   
 http://googleblog.blogspot.de/2011/09/time-technology-and-leaping-seconds.html
   
   Most devices probably don't even know about the leap second coming as
   that would require a firmware upgrade.
   
   
   Karsten
   
   2015-01-25 16:19 GMT+01:00 Mike. the.li...@mgm51.com:
On 1/25/2015 at 9:37 AM Jay Ashworth wrote:
   
|This June 30th, 235959UTC will be followed immediately by 235960UTC.
|
|What will /your/ devices do?
 =
   
   
I've always wondered why this is such a big issue, and why it's done
as it is.
   
In UNIX, for instance, time is measured as the number of seconds
since the UNIX epoch.  imo, the counting of the number of seconds
should not be adjusted, unless there's a time warp of some sort.
The leap second adjustment should be in the display of the time,
i.e., similar to how time zones are handled.
   
   
fwiw
   
   
   

 --
 Ken Chase - m...@sizone.org Toronto