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Xref: sserve comp.unix.bsd:12025 comp.unix.osf.misc:212 Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!noc.near.net!sunfish.hi.com!hicomb.hi.com!mikew From: mikew@hicomb.hi.com (Michael Winiarski) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd,comp.unix.osf.misc Subject: time daemon (timed) questions Date: 5 May 1993 15:47:27 GMT Organization: Hitachi Computer Products, OSSD division Lines: 47 Distribution: world Message-ID: <1s8nif$hik@sunfish.hi.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: gandalf.hi.com Keywords: time, daemon, BSD, OSF -- My primary question is: Should a date/time change on a host that is managed by a slave timed cause a date/time change on all hosts managed by a master timed? The basis of this question comes from an OSF extension to the date command. The date command has a '-n' flag which "does not set the time globally on all machines in a local area network that have their clock synchronized ..." Upon reading the date source code, if '-n' is not specified, it will attempt to send a TSP_SETDATE message to the local timed daemon. Regardless of the timed handling of the message, the local host's time will be set. If the local timed daemon is running as a slave, it will send a TSP_SETDATEREQ message to the master timed, which it turn accepts this message and propogates this "new time" to all the slave timeds on the net with a TSP_SETTIME message. If the local timed is master, then the new time is propogated to all slave timeds with the TSP_SETTIME message. Is it the intended design that the master timed daemon should blindly accept a TSP_SETDATEREQ and then propogate it on the net? Normally, the master is figuring out the average network time and emitting TSP_ADJTIME messages to the slaves (and itself?). If a slave host's time is outside of some time delta, it's time is not figured into the average, but it does get a time adjustment. In our test case, one of the hosts on our net had an incorrect timezone (TZ); it was off by an hour. The super-user on this host noticed that the time didn't match the wall clock, so the date was changed (no...the system was not in single-user mode). This action caused all the hosts on the net to have their times adjusted to 1 hour into the future. Needless to say, this can wreak havoc on cron jobs and the like. In summary, is the above-mentioned interaction between the timed daemon and the date command intended? Is there a design problem somewhere, or am I chasing a non-problem? If I have stated anything that is incorrect, please set me straight. Any thoughts on the matter are appreciated. Please reply by email (rather than posting followups) since I do not frequent this newsgroup. ---------- Michael L. Winiarski Internet: mikew@hicomb.hi.com Hitachi Computer Products (America), Inc. uunet: uunet!hicomb!mikew Reservoir Place Phone: (617) 890-0444 1601 Trapelo Road FAX: (617) 890-4998 Waltham, MA 02154