Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/07/oracle_leap_second/
Oracle tripped up by 'leap second'
Save the Clock Tower
Posted in Applications, 7th January 2009 13:15 GMT
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Database giant Oracle has issued fixes after its Cluster Ready Services (CRS) software failed to cope with the so-called “leap second” added by scientists at the end of 2008.
The Earth Orientation Centre is responsible for calculating when a leap second should be added or subtracted because the Earth doesn’t always orbit perfectly.
Scientists added a second on 31 December 2008, meaning the final countdown required 11 rather than 10 seconds to bring us into the New Year to allow for the time to hit 23:59:60.
But Oracle’s CRS couldn’t cope with the added Marty McFly-style second, which meant that many of its servers rebooted on their own just after midnight on New Year’s Day.
The firm issued a fix for the embarrassing glitch on Monday after many sys admins grumbled (http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/engine?do=post_view_flat;post=110928;page=1;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;mh=25;list=nanog) that their CRS nodes were rebooting.
Oracle said (http://www.oracle.com/support/index.html) versions 10.1.0.2 to 11.1.0.7 of the Oracle Server Enterprise Edition, running on 64-bit Sun Solaris servers with CRS and Oracle patch sets 10.2.0.1 to 11.1.0.7 were affected by the cockup.
At the start of 2009 Microsoft suffered a similar Fail with its 2006 30GB Zune model because the internal clock driver couldn’t handle leap years, causing the iPod imitators to have a lie down (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/31/zune_death/) when the clock struck midnight. ®