Leap second - possible problems?

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Hi guys,
I'm dealing with really non updated machines (RHEL 5 - 6 and older) with uptime more than 3 years and I don't have a clue, what can happens if leap second occurs...
All machines are using NTP (but original source of time sync is unknown) and all have tzdata packages from 2012. Kernels are newer than affected and described in article. According to RHEL Article there are several workarounds.

  1. Using NTP without updated tzadata - NTP leap second flag is not distributed >> In this case, is leap second is ignored?
  2. Not using NTP without updated tzdata >> Also, in this case leap second ignored?
  3. Not using NTP with updated tzdata >> Leap Second will be successfully carried?
    3.5 Why is neccessary to use /right/ packages?

What can be consequences in cases 1 and 2?

Thanks for replies! :)

Responses

Hi Patrik,

You write that all your systems are using NTP, so you should be OK. See the article you linked:

Systems running any version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux should automatically account for leap second corrections if they are using the NTP (Network Time Protocol) daemon to synchronize their local timekeeping with an NTP server.

You can also try the leap second lab to determine if your system might be susceptible to problems.

Well, in perfect situation NTP server will have correct information about leap second and pass this information to clients, but I'm almost confident this server dont have connection to public NTP server and also is not updated with latest packages...

My NTP server sync from a public NTP Server, but my NTP Server does not have updated tzdata, all my servers(NTP Client) syncs via my local NTP Server but they donot have updated tzdata as well

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