On 2019-10-26 09:32, Mark Kettenis wrote: >> From: "Todd C. Miller" <mill...@openbsd.org> >> Date: Sat, 26 Oct 2019 06:55:02 -0600 >> >> On Sat, 26 Oct 2019 12:15:33 +0100, Stuart Henderson wrote: >> >> > The way these files are supposed to work is that you set the system >> > clock to the time with leap-seconds included (UTC+leap, or TAI-10) and >> > copy the entire "right" set of files to the main zoneinfo directory >> > (upstream provides them as parallel directories to encourage this). >> > >> > And everyone else sets the system clock to UTC and uses the "posix" files. >> > >> > https://data.iana.org/time-zones/theory.html#leapsec >> > >> > We don't have much support for a non-UTC system clock (e.g. openntpd only >> > seems to copy the flag from the server and doesn't use it to adjust the >> > clock), and the files definitely cause some confusion. Should we follow >> > FreeBSD and Solaris and not install the leap-second files at all? > > NTP leapsecond support isn't really related to the use of these files > though. In fact, it mostly exists to support the POSIX interpretation > of time_t. > > The fundamental problem with the "right" files is that the time_t > values end up being different from their POSIX values for the same UTC > time. So whenever these are stored and compared between systems (or > environments that set the TZ environment variable) things get weird. > >> I think so. Unless there are programs that use these files directly >> I don't see a real use for them. > > Agreed. Software that really cares probably has its own leap-second > table and will actually rely on the POSIX definition of time_t to > convert times into human readable form. That's at least what the > software I've seen and written does ;). >
well...using the "normal" set seems to have done wonderful things for my computer's problem. So, yeah, I guess they probably fall under the "more trouble than they are worth" category. Nick.
