What happens during a Leap Second?
The theory of leap seconds in explained in Q: 2.4.. In reality there are two cases to consider: • If the operating system implements the kernel discipline described in Section 5.2, ntpd will announce insertion and deletion of leap seconds to the kernel. The kernel will handle the leap seconds without further action necessary. • If the operating system does not implement the kernel discipline, the clock will show an error of one second relative to NTP’s time immediate after the leap second. The situation will be handled just like an unexpected change of time: The operating system will continue with the wrong time for some time, but eventually ntpd will step the time. Effectively this will cause the correction for leap seconds to be applied too late.
