‘Leap Second’ Bug Wreaks Havoc Across Web

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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Messages
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We reported on the addition of a one second to the world’s clocks yesterday to correct for the Earth’s rotation, but since the one second was added last night at 7:59pm ET, some systems around the Internet couldn’t seem to handle the discrepancy of time. It’s Déjà vu all over again. :D

Many computing systems use what’s called the Network Time Protocol, or NTP, to keep themselves in sync with the world’s atomic clocks, and when an extra second is added, some just don’t know how to handle it.
 
You'd think they'd at least have the sense to warn everyone in advance so they could get things sorted out beforehand. You'd think they'd have taken notes from the DST date change screwing up things.

It may not be Y2K, but maybe that's because this actually is causing some problems.
 
For Y2K, the entire future was handled, but they couldn't handle an extra second?
 
Yeah, Netflix being offline is a pretty serious issue and each moment it isn't working brings us one step closer to a global crisis. It'll be horrible. I predict that by the end of the day we'll have:

Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!
Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes...
The dead rising from the grave!
Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!

So yeah, someone go restart the 33 MHz 486 DX CD server that Netflix is using to stream media so we don't have to deal with a giant marshmallow man next.
 
See this is why I do not live in fear of the machines rising up to destroy us (Terminator, Matrix, etc), they get tough enough to destroy us we fight back... by changing the clocks!

does not compute

DOES NOT COMPUTE!

DOES NOT CO *bzzzzt*
 
See this is why I do not live in fear of the machines rising up to destroy us (Terminator, Matrix, etc), they get tough enough to destroy us we fight back... by changing the clocks!

does not compute

DOES NOT COMPUTE!

DOES NOT CO *bzzzzt*

This statement is a lie.
 
Drift is built into NTP and most system handle DST just fine, what's the big deal with an extra second being a problem? Linux logging just goes on with double the log lines for that second and cron runs on the minute and doesn't care if the previous one had 59, 60, or 61 seconds in it. You'd think that big companies would have their servers set up properly. At least my servers didn't care (I got no error msg in my mail).
 
this has been known to sysadmins for quite some time now.

With DST changes they had announced the updates months in advance, there's nothing they can do if sysadmins are ignorant or lazy.

You'd think they'd at least have the sense to warn everyone in advance so they could get things sorted out beforehand. You'd think they'd have taken notes from the DST date change screwing up things.

It may not be Y2K, but maybe that's because this actually is causing some problems.
 
It's only a lie if it tries to divide by zero.

Wait don't say that. Wait don't say that. Wait don't say that. Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.................................................................................................
 
Wait don't say that. Wait don't say that. Wait don't say that. Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.Wait don't say that.................................................................................................

Actually, I was thinking about this...
funny-animal-captions-animal-capshunz-my-number-may-be-undefined-but-my-domains-right-here.jpg

...though it has nothing to do with broken coded robots becoming our new masters and being defeated by someone changing the time. :p
 
this has been known to sysadmins for quite some time now.

With DST changes they had announced the updates months in advance, there's nothing they can do if sysadmins are ignorant or lazy.

Where did you see or hear about this at?
 
Drift is built into NTP and most system handle DST just fine, what's the big deal with an extra second being a problem? Linux logging just goes on with double the log lines for that second and cron runs on the minute and doesn't care if the previous one had 59, 60, or 61 seconds in it. You'd think that big companies would have their servers set up properly. At least my servers didn't care (I got no error msg in my mail).

Systems handle DST by ignoring it. DST doesn't affect any of the internal clocks nor code accessing the clock, it's just an offset on the display - nothing more. The problem with leap seconds is that they do affect internal clocks, which affects far more than just logging. Could cause hiccups in internal timing and timeouts, for example.

Google came up with a clever solution to the problem (and has more detail on what it is a problem): http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/time-technology-and-leaping-seconds.html
 
Interesting. I happened to be looking at dmesg log yesterday on one of my Linux systems and noticed a message saying a leap second got added, I thought it was odd since normally those are done in January, but never thought much of it after that.

None of my systems, even custom coded stuff, got affected though. I can't really see how a half decently coded app would suffer by having a single second added, or even removed.

If it was adding a full minute I could see any time based stuff getting a hiccup, but full blown downtime?
 
The leap year second did what the RIAA couldn't do:

"TPB crashed just after midnight June 30th GMT (5.5 hrs ago)
The crash appears to have been caused by the leap second that was issued at midnight.
Due to a bug in the NTP daemon, this has caused crashes of Debian based Linux machines all over the world. TPB will be back as soon as we can get a sober admin to fix the problem."

When the sober admin realized that a hint had been given as to the location of TPB's servers, he claimed it was a server move instead.
 
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