adjtime(3) Library Functions Manual adjtime(3)
NAME
adjtime - correct the time to synchronize the system clock
LIBRARY
Standard C library (libc, -lc)
SYNOPSIS
#include <sys/time.h>
int adjtime(const struct timeval *delta, struct timeval *olddelta);
Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):
adjtime():
Since glibc 2.19:
_DEFAULT_SOURCE
glibc 2.19 and earlier:
_BSD_SOURCE
DESCRIPTION
The adjtime() function gradually adjusts the system clock (as returned
by gettimeofday(2)). The amount of time by which the clock is to be ad-
justed is specified in the structure pointed to by delta. This struc-
ture has the following form:
struct timeval {
time_t tv_sec; /* seconds */
suseconds_t tv_usec; /* microseconds */
};
If the adjustment in delta is positive, then the system clock is speeded
up by some small percentage (i.e., by adding a small amount of time to
the clock value in each second) until the adjustment has been completed.
If the adjustment in delta is negative, then the clock is slowed down in
a similar fashion.
If a clock adjustment from an earlier adjtime() call is already in
progress at the time of a later adjtime() call, and delta is not NULL
for the later call, then the earlier adjustment is stopped, but any al-
ready completed part of that adjustment is not undone.
If olddelta is not NULL, then the buffer that it points to is used to
return the amount of time remaining from any previous adjustment that
has not yet been completed.
RETURN VALUE
On success, adjtime() returns 0. On failure, -1 is returned, and errno
is set to indicate the error.
ERRORS
EINVAL The adjustment in delta is outside the permitted range.
EPERM The caller does not have sufficient privilege to adjust the time.
Under Linux, the CAP_SYS_TIME capability is required.
ATTRIBUTES
For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see attributes(7).
┌────────────────────────────────────────────┬───────────────┬─────────┐
│ Interface │ Attribute │ Value │
├────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────┼─────────┤
│ adjtime() │ Thread safety │ MT-Safe │
└────────────────────────────────────────────┴───────────────┴─────────┘
STANDARDS
None.
HISTORY
4.3BSD, System V.
NOTES
The adjustment that adjtime() makes to the clock is carried out in such
a manner that the clock is always monotonically increasing. Using adj-
time() to adjust the time prevents the problems that could be caused for
certain applications (e.g., make(1)) by abrupt positive or negative
jumps in the system time.
adjtime() is intended to be used to make small adjustments to the system
time. Most systems impose a limit on the adjustment that can be speci-
fied in delta. In the glibc implementation, delta must be less than or
equal to (INT_MAX / 1000000 - 2) and greater than or equal to (INT_MIN /
1000000 + 2) (respectively 2145 and -2145 seconds on i386).
BUGS
A longstanding bug meant that if delta was specified as NULL, no valid
information about the outstanding clock adjustment was returned in old-
delta. (In this circumstance, adjtime() should return the outstanding
clock adjustment, without changing it.) This bug is fixed on systems
with glibc 2.8 or later and Linux kernel 2.6.26 or later.
SEE ALSO
adjtimex(2), gettimeofday(2), time(7)
Linux man-pages 6.9.1 2024-05-02 adjtime(3)
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