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Date:      Mon, 1 Jul 1996 16:19:03 -0400
From:      Garrett Wollman <wollman@lcs.mit.edu>
To:        "Eric J. Schwertfeger" <ejs@bfd.com>
Cc:        questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   tickadj questions
Message-ID:  <9607012019.AA10857@halloran-eldar.lcs.mit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSI.3.94.960624091642.8740B-100000@harlie.bfd.com>
References:  <Pine.BSI.3.94.960624091642.8740B-100000@harlie.bfd.com>

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<<On Mon, 24 Jun 1996 09:41:18 -0700 (PDT), "Eric J. Schwertfeger" <ejs@bfd.com> said:

> 1) new_tick:  as I understand it, this tells the system how many
> microseconds should pass before it ticks the hz counter.  Is this correct?
> This gives the ability to correct to 100PPM, or about 8 seconds.

No.  It tells the system how many microseconds to add to the clock
variable (called `time') when a timer tick occurs.

> 2) new_tickadj:  I'm not sure I understand this one.  It obviously isn't
> simply added to tick, otherwise there would be no point.  I suspect that
> it is added to the tick count once a second, for adjustments down to 1PPM.

No.  `tickadj' is the parameter which controls how fast the adjtime(2)
system call is allowed to slew the clock.  When adjusting in a
negative direction, the clock code subtracts `tickadj' from `tick'
before adding it to `time' on each clock tick.

> 3) Does FreeBSD read or write the CMOS clock while running?  I know with
> SunOS 4.0, I have to turn this off.

Actually, no.  In SunOS 4.0, the operating system assumes that the
CMOS clock is more accurate than the `time' variable and slaves the
latter to the former (in a particularly ham-handed way).  In FreeBSD,
we are under no such delusions.  However, when you reboot or halt the
system under the control of reboot(2), the current value of `time' is
written back into the CMOS clock (potentially with a timezone
adjustment); there is a sysctl(8) MIB variable to disable this
behavior.

-GAWollman

--
Garrett A. Wollman   | Shashish is simple, it's discreet, it's brief. ... 
wollman@lcs.mit.edu  | Shashish is the bonding of hearts in spite of distance.
Opinions not those of| It is a bond more powerful than absence.  We like people
MIT, LCS, ANA, or NSA| who like Shashish.  - Claude McKenzie + Florent Vollant



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