Ubuntu
tzdata package

Leap second 2015

Asked by Kadambari

Hello,

The next leap second insertion is scheduled for June 30th, 2015 at 23:59:60 UTC. This means that additional 1 sec will be added to the clock .

More info on leap second can be found on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_second

As per the article https://access.redhat.com/articles/15145 all system using NTP to sync time will not encounter any issues.

But there are certain instances that some time ntp service is dead or clock sync is a bit slow, to avoid this I would recommend to update the time zone data package to latest version available.

RHEL 4- tzdata-2015a-1.el4 or later
RHEL 5- tzdata-2015a-1.el5 or later
RHEL 6- tzdata-2015a-1.el6 or late
RHEL 7 - tzdata-2015a-1.el7 or later

The same is applicable for Oracle Enterprise Linux 5, 6 and 7.

My question is , is this an impact to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS server as well and if yes then what is recommended to prevent this.
I am newbie to Ubuntu, so please help with detailed steps.

Thanks

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Manfred Hampl (m-hampl) said : 		#1

As you can see from https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/tzdata the current version of tzdata for all supported Ubuntu releases is 2015d or higher, and as far as I can see, all versions since 2015a use the current leap-seconds file with information about the end of June leap second.

See the changelog in https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/tzdata/2015a-0ubuntu0.12.04

If you are regularly implementing the security updates on that server, you should already be on the safe side.

Just to verify the status of that system, what is the output of the terminal commands

uname -a
lsb_release -crid
apt-cache policy tzdata

Revision history for this message
Kadambari (kadambari-deshpande) said : 		#2

Hello ,

The output is :

$ uname -a
Linux vir-t-app01 3.11.0-15-generic #25~precise1-Ubuntu SMP Thu Jan 30 17:39:31 UTC 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 12.04.4 LTS
Release: 12.04
Codename: precise

hwe-support-status --verbose (command not found.)

on my server it is :
~$ dpkg -l tzdata
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name Version Description
+++-==========================-==========================-====================================================================
ii tzdata 2013g-0ubuntu0.12.04 time zone and daylight-saving time data

So which debian package do i download and apply, will it need downtime and also will it require ntp restart?

Thanks,

Revision history for this message
Manfred Hampl (m-hampl) said : 		#3

Your system seems to be missing a number of updates.
At least the tzinfo package is outdated, but that might be the smaller problem.
Do you remember the security vulnerabilities that were in the news in the past few months (heartbleed, shellshock, ...)? If you haven't updated tzinfo, then I doubt that your system is patched against those other security vulnerabilities.

Also the kernel version that you are running is not supported any more.

I have already presented some ideas in https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/263808 and https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/268414

In my opinion it does not make sense to do just cherry-picking with selected updates.
Updating tzdata alone does not help at all against other security vulnerabilities.

I recommend that you implement a regular schedule of installing all security updates (after checking whether the other software running on the server is compatible with them).

Can you help with this problem?

Provide an answer of your own, or ask Kadambari for more information if necessary.

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