Hello, I am experiencing a number of 'Time moved backwards errors' such as: Mar 27 11:38:20 host-78-129-239-60 dovecot: imap-login: Time just moved backwards by 729 seconds. This might cause a lot of problems, so I'll just kill myself now. http://wiki.dovecot.org/TimeMovedBackwards Mar 27 15:20:10 host-78-129-239-60 dovecot: Time just moved backwards by 4214 seconds. This might cause a lot of problems, so I'll just kill myself now. http://wiki.dovecot.org/TimeMovedBackwards Mar 29 11:08:59 host-78-129-239-60 dovecot: imap-login: Time just moved backwards by 4341 seconds. This might cause a lot of problems, so I'll just kill myself now. http://wiki.dovecot.org/TimeMovedBackwards on my Centos 5.2 openvz - based VPS I have raised the issue with my VPS provider, who are responding that 'the jury is still out' as to whether this is a system, or Dovecot problem. Reading the TimeMovedBackwards article on the Dovecot wiki, and the kernel mailing list thread referred to on it, it would seem quite apparent that this is caused by a failure of the gettimeofday() function to reliably return the correct value. If anyone has any advice as to how I could proceed to fix this (I currently have a watch on the Dovecot service which restarts it after any failures) or how I should best phrase this to get it resolved 'upstream' by the VPS provider, I would be very grateful. Thank you, Patrick Vale
time should *never* move backwards. OSes (and programs) assume time is always moving forward. Injure your VPS provider. On 2009 Apr 02 (Thu) at 12:49:43 +0100 (+0100), Bloke wrote: :Hello, : :I am experiencing a number of 'Time moved backwards errors' such as: : :Mar 27 11:38:20 host-78-129-239-60 dovecot: imap-login: Time just moved backwards by 729 seconds. This might cause a lot of problems, so I'll just kill myself now. http://wiki.dovecot.org/TimeMovedBackwards :Mar 27 15:20:10 host-78-129-239-60 dovecot: Time just moved backwards by 4214 seconds. This might cause a lot of problems, so I'll just kill myself now. http://wiki.dovecot.org/TimeMovedBackwards :Mar 29 11:08:59 host-78-129-239-60 dovecot: imap-login: Time just moved backwards by 4341 seconds. This might cause a lot of problems, so I'll just kill myself now. http://wiki.dovecot.org/TimeMovedBackwards : :on my Centos 5.2 openvz - based VPS : :I have raised the issue with my VPS provider, who are responding that 'the jury is still out' as to whether this is a system, or Dovecot problem. : :Reading the TimeMovedBackwards article on the Dovecot wiki, and the kernel mailing list thread referred to on it, it would seem quite apparent that this is caused by a failure of the gettimeofday() function to reliably return the correct value. : :If anyone has any advice as to how I could proceed to fix this (I currently have a watch on the Dovecot service which restarts it after any failures) or how I should best phrase this to get it resolved 'upstream' by the VPS provider, I would be very grateful. : :Thank you, : :Patrick Vale : -- Valerie: Aww, Tom, you're going maudlin on me ... Tom: I reserve the right to wax maudlin as I wane eloquent ... -- Tom Chapin
On Fri, 2009-04-03 at 05:43, Charles Marcus wrote:> On 4/2/2009, Tom Diehl (tdiehl at rogueind.com) wrote: > > I see this all of the time on an EL4 machine when it is under high > > load. The clock is synced to ntp but I still get dovecot killing > > itself. Sometimes ntp looses sync but not always. > > Hopefully you meant ntpd, not ntpdate... but I believe the OP was using > a VM, so ntpd is not an option...How is that so? we use some vmware and xen setups, and ntpd works fine on both
On 4/2/2009 6:05 PM, Noel Butler wrote:>>> I see this all of the time on an EL4 machine when it is under >>> high load. The clock is synced to ntp but I still get dovecot >>> killing itself. Sometimes ntp looses sync but not always.>> Hopefully you meant ntpd, not ntpdate... but I believe the OP was >> using a VM, so ntpd is not an option...> How is that so? we use some vmware and xen setups, and ntpd works > fine on bothhttp://support.ntp.org/bin/view/Support/KnownOsIssues#Section_9.2.2. -- Best regards, Charles
On Fri, 2009-04-03 at 20:08, Charles Marcus wrote:> >> Hopefully you meant ntpd, not ntpdate... but I believe the OP was > >> using a VM, so ntpd is not an option... > > > How is that so? we use some vmware and xen setups, and ntpd works > > fine on both > > http://support.ntp.org/bin/view/Support/KnownOsIssues#Section_9.2.2.interesting, I run it fine on both, I skewed the clock on host and guest on boot set correct time