Prepare for potential leap second issues in Red Hat Enterprise Linux

At 23:59 UTC on June 30, 2015, clocks will count all the way up to 60 seconds. This is known as a leap second, a periodic one-second adjustment of Coordinated Universal Time(UTC) in order to keep a system's time of day close to the mean solar time. However, the Earth's rotation speed varies in response to climatic and geological events, and due to this, UTC leap seconds are irregularly spaced and unpredictable. In previous instances of leap second insertion, this has caused kernel crashes and other errors in Red Hat Enterprise Linux. In order to avoid these potential issues, we strongly recommend updating to the most recent kernels.

For further information on the leap second, workarounds and updates, please visit Resolve Leap Second Issues in Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

To test your system(s) for issues relating to leap second, please visit the Leap Second Issue Detector.