* John Stultz <john.stu...@linaro.org> wrote:
> Currently, leapsecond adjustments are done at tick time.
>
> As a result, the leapsecond was applied at the first timer
> tick *after* the leapsecond (~1-10ms late depending on HZ),
> rather then exactly on the second edge.
>
> This was in part historical from back when we were always
> tick based, but correcting this since has been avoided since
> it adds extra conditional checks in the gettime fastpath,
> which has performance overhead.
>
> However, it was recently pointed out that ABS_TIME
> CLOCK_REALTIME timers set for right after the leapsecond
> could fire a second early, since some timers may be expired
> before we trigger the timekeeping timer, which then applies
> the leapsecond.
>
> This isn't quite as bad as it sounds, since behaviorally
> it is similar to what is possible w/ ntpd made leapsecond
> adjustments done w/o using the kernel discipline. Where
> due to latencies, timers may fire just prior to the
> settimeofday call. (Also, one should note that all
> applications using CLOCK_REALTIME timers should always be
> careful, since they are prone to quirks from settimeofday()
> disturbances.)
>
> However, the purpose of having the kernel do the leap adjustment
> is to avoid such latencies, so I think this is worth fixing.
>
> So in order to properly keep those timers from firing a second
> early, this patch modifies the gettime accessors to do the
> extra checks to apply the leapsecond adjustment on the second
> edge. This prevents the timer core from expiring timers too
> early.
>
> This patch does not handle VDSO time implementations, so
> userspace using vdso gettime will still see the leapsecond
> applied at the first timer tick after the leapsecond.
> This is a bit of a tradeoff, since the performance impact
> would be greatest to VDSO implementations, and since vdso
> interfaces don't provide the TIME_OOP flag, one can't
> distinquish the leapsecond from a time discontinuity (such
> as settimeofday), so correcting the VDSO may not be as
> important there.
>
> Apologies to Richard Cochran, who pushed for such a change
> years ago, which I resisted due to the concerns about the
> performance overhead.
>
> While I suspect this isn't extremely critical, folks who
> care about strict leap-second correctness will likely
> want to watch this, and it will likely be a -stable candidate.
>
> Cc: Prarit Bhargava <pra...@redhat.com>
> Cc: Daniel Bristot de Oliveira <bris...@redhat.com>
> Cc: Richard Cochran <richardcoch...@gmail.com>
> Cc: Jan Kara <j...@suse.cz>
> Cc: Jiri Bohac <jbo...@suse.cz>
> Cc: Thomas Gleixner <t...@linutronix.de>
> Cc: Ingo Molnar <mi...@redhat.com>
> Cc: Shuah Khan <shua...@osg.samsung.com>
> Originally-suggested-by: Richard Cochran <richardcoch...@gmail.com>
> Reported-by: Daniel Bristot de Oliveira <bris...@redhat.com>
> Reported-by: Prarit Bhargava <pra...@redhat.com>
> Signed-off-by: John Stultz <john.stu...@linaro.org>
> ---
> include/linux/time64.h | 1 +
> include/linux/timekeeper_internal.h | 7 +++
> kernel/time/ntp.c | 73 +++++++++++++++++++++++++---
> kernel/time/ntp_internal.h | 1 +
> kernel/time/timekeeping.c | 97
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-----
> 5 files changed, 159 insertions(+), 20 deletions(-)
So I don't like the complexity of this at all: why do we add over 100 lines of
code for something that occurs (literally) once in a blue moon?
... and for that reason I'm not surprised at all that it broke in non-obvious
ways.
Instead of having these super rare special events, how about implementing leap
second smearing instead? That's far less radical and a lot easier to test as
well,
as it's a continuous mechanism. It will also confuse user-space a lot less,
because there are no sudden time jumps.
Secondly, why is there a directional flag? I thought leap seconds can only be
inserted.
So all in one, the leap second code is fragile and complex - lets re-think the
whole topic instead of complicating it even more ...
Thanks,
Ingo
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