Re: [Ntp] Antw: Re: Finding leap-seconds.list

[Hal Murray <[e-mail]>]

[e-mail] said:
> The deadline for #6 is leap-second day, correct? ntpd only announces an
> impending leap second in the last 24 hours before the leap second. Or is that
> just a reference implementation detail. When there's no leap second the
> deadline is a few days before since that's the expiration of the previous
> file. 

The ntpd-kernel API is "leap tonight".
The ntpd-ntpd API is "leap at the end of this month".

A valid local leap-seconds file overrides the results from upstream servers.

I'm not sure what happens if ntpd has a valid leap-seconds file after it 
expires.

The early announcement on the wire gives humans a chance to verify that the servers are announcing as expected and/or maybe time to correct things if something is not right.

>>   3 TZDB releases updated copy from NIST
>>   4  distro releases update to TZDB
>>   5  end system picks up new TZDB from distro
> Also, to be clear, as far as ntpd is concerned, steps 3, 4, 5 are all
> *optional* if there's another mechanism to pull in a new leap-second.txt file
> from elsewhere. #5 implies an upgrade of at least some of the packages on the
> system. While that's *A* way to do it, there are other equally valid ways. We
> should allow for the extra time, of course, for this to happen. 

Correct.

I think the timing on alternatives will be similar so I haven't explored them.  In many cases, step 3 goes away.


> P.S. Sorry if I'm being too nit-picky here, but traditionally there's been a
> wide diversity of methods for obtaining leap-seconds.txt, and it would be
> premature to standardize on the above list. 

Doesn't look nit-picky to me.  Not even mildly so, much less "too".  Thanks for pointing it out so it gets archived.

My main goal is to avoid having every end-user workstation running a cron job pointed at some server that can't do anything about it if some distro ships a buggy version that turns into a DoS.

If your users get it from your servers, I'll be happy.



-- 
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