[154487] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: F-ckin Leap Seconds, how do they work?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Peter Lothberg)
Thu Jul 5 11:37:26 2012
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2012 17:34:18 CEST
From: Peter Lothberg <roll@Stupi.SE>
To: Jimmy Hess <mysidia@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAAAwwbV2D64jxQKsJu-Nw-zhi=53CakGzu_ys+dovz7-XvFa9g@mail.gmail.com>
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
Most systems that deals with time has a slightly different way of
doing it than U*ix.. ref: CCIR 457-1
Like this:
56113.6294791667
56113.6301736111
56113 is MJD, modified julian date (http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/mjd.html)
Want to knew the time between two observations, just subtract and you
get days and fraction of day. (I's about 60sec between the lines above..)
--P
Ps: Tops20/Twenex/Tenex keeps the kernel time this way, in 18+18 bits...
> On 7/3/12, Vadim Antonov <avg@kotovnik.com> wrote:
> > There's always a possibility of using pseudo-TAI internally by
> > reconstructing it from UTC. This is not the best solution (because it
> > requires systems to have long-term memory of past leap seconds, or
> How about, instead of requiring systems to "remember" past leap seconds;
>
> You represent every single timestamp instead of as
> timestamp = <32-bit int, seconds since jan 1 1970 00:00:00>
>
> You represent all system timestamps as tuples:
> timestamp = ( <32-bint int seconds since jan 1 1970 00:00:00>,
> <integer representing the leap-second offset
> since jan 1 1970> )
>
> No need to retain a history. Just retain the data in the same way
> that Hours, Minutes, and Second are retained.
> Comparison is simple.
>
> (Timestamp2 - Offset2) - (Timestamp1 - Offset1)
>
>
> The downside is you can no longer set your system clock by hand,
> because humans won't know the right number of "leap seconds" to
> supply when setting the time from their wall clock.
>
> That's a problem necesitating you keep a history anyways.
> For time to be universally coordinated, it has to be coordinated.
>
> One of the basic requirements for system time is that it interacts
> with humans, and
> humans have to be able to set their clock from conventional time
> sources which are based on local time, without the machine having to
> be constantly updated or reach out on a network and figure out how
> that translates into a reasonable machine time.
>
> --
> -JH
>
>
