David Mathog wrote:
> After patching all of my Solaris systems I poked around trying to find a
> method to show what the current settings are. Eventually I
> found this:
>
> zdump -v PST8PDT | grep 2007
> PST8PDT Wed Mar 7 16:46:24 2007 UTC = Wed Mar 7 08:46:24 2007 PST
> isdst=0
> PST8PDT Sun Mar 11 09:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Mar 11 01:59:59 2007 PST
> isdst=0
> PST8PDT Sun Mar 11 10:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Mar 11 03:00:00 2007 PDT
> isdst=1
> PST8PDT Sun Nov 4 08:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Nov 4 01:59:59 2007 PDT
> isdst=1
> PST8PDT Sun Nov 4 09:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Nov 4 01:00:00 2007 PST
> isdst=0
>
> (Sorry about the wrap.) The first line is the current time. The next
> four lines indicate the DST changes. I'm not entirely sure how to read
> this though. It looks like it says that 3/11 01:59:59 is followed by
> 3/11 03:00:00, and 11/4 01:59:59 is followed by 11/4 01:00:00.
> Is that the correct interpretation?
>
> Where are leap year and leap second information stored? I thought
> they would be in here but I can't find any sign of them. Sure,
> the leap year pattern has been cast in stone for a long time, but
> leap seconds are put in "as needed", there's no formula for them.
> See for instance:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_second
>
> Admittedly leap seconds don't matter much in most calculations, but
> it would be nice to know that this adjustment isn't just swept under
> the rug.
>
> Thanks,
>
> David Mathog

AFAIK, VMS does not deal with leap seconds at all unless you are running
NTP. If your systems are not running NTP, they are almost certainly
already off by more than one second!