Umm, the presence of a copy of the IANA TZ distribution at https://www.ietf.org/timezones/ is not evidence of an "IETF leap-seconds list." This is bizarre, and probably a web server configuration error that even exists. The IETF is not involved in this list. I guess this shows why Google is an unreliable indicator of authority.

https://www.ietf.org/timezones/data/leap-seconds.list
is not a URL anyone should be depending on.

https://data.iana.org/time-zones/code/leap-seconds.list
is perhaps a better URL for the file in the tz distribution, but I'd hestitate to call it canonical. Start at https://www.iana.org/time-zones.

But then the tz database isn't an authorative source, either. Per the NEWS file:

The 'leapseconds' file is now generated automatically from a
new file 'leap-seconds.list', which is a copy of
<ftp://time.nist.gov/pub/leap-seconds.list>.
A new source file 'leapseconds.awk' implements this.
The goal is simplification of the future maintenance of 'leapseconds'.

That is, it's just a copy of NIST's file.

Your email would make a lot more sense if you had included the URLs directly rather than referring to your source code and output file that happen to contain them.

--jhawk@mit.edu
John Hawkinson

Anders Wallin anders.e.e.wallin@gmail.com wrote on Wed, 20 Dec 2017
at 13:51:21 +0200 in CAPnVNRV=4gxKn5C3-Zh6zfqwK6NhjNcn9Qkr_rLhU-GkfzYZHQ@mail.gmail.com:

...

...

Thanks,
I added the IANA URL to my list, and sent them an e-mail.
I can't seem to reach the nist ftp-server - does it work for anyone?

I re-named the output.txt so the link in my previous e-mail won't work.
The output now shows on the github repo frontpage:
https://github.com/aewallin/leap-seconds.list_sha1_check

Anders

On Wed, Dec 20, 2017 at 2:18 PM, John Hawkinson jhawk@mit.edu wrote:

John Hawkinson wrote:

In fact, when NIST or IERS have provided a new leap-seconds.list file
then it is picked up somewhat later by the TZ database maintainers, and
updated in the TZ database.

The IERS page only provides the content of the last recently released TZ
database package, so the updated leap-seconds.list file will only appear
on the IERS page after a new version of the TZ database has been
released, whenever that happens.

So there may be a significant delay until an updated leap-seconds.list
file becomes available at the IETF web site, and I strongly suggest to
pick that file up from either
ftp://time.nist.gov/pub/leap-seconds.list

or
https://hpiers.obspm.fr/iers/bul/bulc/ntp/leap-seconds.list

See also a summary at
https://www.meinbergglobal.com/download/burnicki/the_ntp_leap_second_file.pdf

Martin

Anders Wallin wrote:

Please note the global address time.nist.gov is resolved to a number of
public servers in a round-robin sequence. Some of the servers may not be
reachable due to a high load, and others might resolve to IPv6 addresses
and thus can only be reached if there is a direct IPv6 or IPv6-over-IPv4
tunnel to the internet.

According to an email from Judah Levine (NIST) the current version of
the leap second file is available via anonymous FTP from all public NIST
NTP servers. A list of these servers and the status of each server is
available at
http://tf.nist.gov/tf-cgi/servers.cgi

which is linked to from
http://tf.nist.gov/

See also the PDF I mentioned in the email I just sent a minute ago.

Martin

Martin Burnicki wrote:

I just saw that the main page http://tf.nist.gov/ has moved. It's now
https://www.nist.gov/pml/time-and-frequency-division  or
https://www.nist.gov/pml/time-and-frequency-division/services/internet-time-service-its

Martin

Martin Burnicki wrote:

I saw that the leapseconds file provided by USNO is outdated, and FTP
access to the NIST sites has changed, so I've just updated the PDF
accordingly.

Martin

This is not a bug but a « feature ». From the ntpd leap hash checking code:

• The NIST code creating the hash writes them out as 5 hex integers

• without leading zeros.

  Still, it a little unorthodox and complicates the code.

"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. »
George Bernard Shaw

Ha! Thanks for explaining this.
Indeed I find writing out the SHA-1 in groups of 8 characters without
leading zeroes quite surprising and undocumented.
The comments in leap-seconds.list about the SHA-1 refer to a /sha or
/pub/sha folder - is that generic information on the SHA-1 or is there any
inidication of the 8-char/leading-zeroes convention there?
I quickly looked at FIPS-180 but didn't find anything about leading zeros
there.

I am still unable to access the NIST ftp-site linked earlier in this thread.

Anders

My guess is that during testing the NIST guy who created the program to print the list never hit the case where the integer created a less than 8 character hex output.
Probably used %8x instead of %08x in his format statement, or something analog if it was not C.  A case of «  economy of thought » .

"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. »
George Bernard Shaw