Apparently cron keeps it's own pace while waiting for the next event
scheduled. If the system is rather busy, cron can loos track of time.
As soon cron wakes up it checks the systems time and logs the difference.
Indeed the messages appear in the log file at times the system is busy
doing backups or many compilations are run simultaneously.
Many thanks to all who came to the rescue:
Syed Zaeem Hosain <szh@zcon.com>
Ric Anderson <ric@rtd.com>
Andy Gay <andy@rdl.co.uk>
Casper Dik <casper@holland.Sun.COM>
Thomas Tonino <ttonino@bio.vu.nl>
Neil Rickert <rickert@cs.niu.edu>
Peter Hesse <hessep@gb.swissbank.com>
John Nelson <John.Nelson@Eng.Sun.COM>
==========================================================================
SRDB ID: 6263
SYNOPSIS: cron clock time drifted backwards
DETAIL DESCRIPTION:
In /var/cron/log, the system administrator might be surprised to find
the following message:
! clock time drifted backwards!
followed by a time stamp. This is a normal diagnostic message.
SOLUTION SUMMARY:
Cron runs every minute. When it runs, it checks the time it expects to
see with the actual system time. Occasionally, cron makes adjustments to
its own internal time value in order to match the system time exactly.
The above message alone cannot be disabled w/out recompiling cron.c.
All cron logging messages can be turned off by editing /etc/default/cron.
BUG REPORT ID: n/a
PATCH ID: n/a
PRODUCT AREA: n/a
PRODUCT: System_admin
SUNOS RELEASE: Solaris 2.3
UNBUNDLED RELEASE: n/a
HARDWARE: All
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
Herbert 't Hoen Unique Int. B.V. (hth@unique.nl)
Kerkstraat 100 Postbus 1 Tel.036-5382600
1354 AC ALMERE 1300 AA ALMERE Fax.036-5382828
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Sep 28 2001 - 23:10:52 CDT