xref: /openbsd/lib/libc/sys/adjtime.2 (revision 7b36286a)
1.\"	$OpenBSD: adjtime.2,v 1.17 2007/05/31 19:19:32 jmc Exp $
2.\"	$NetBSD: adjtime.2,v 1.5 1995/10/12 15:40:44 jtc Exp $
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31.\"     @(#)adjtime.2	8.1 (Berkeley) 6/4/93
32.\"
33.Dd $Mdocdate: May 31 2007 $
34.Dt ADJTIME 2
35.Os
36.Sh NAME
37.Nm adjtime
38.Nd "correct the time to allow synchronization of the system clock"
39.Sh SYNOPSIS
40.Fd #include <sys/time.h>
41.Ft int
42.Fn adjtime "const struct timeval *delta" "struct timeval *olddelta"
43.Sh DESCRIPTION
44.Fn adjtime
45makes small adjustments to the system time, as returned by
46.Xr gettimeofday 2 ,
47advancing or retarding it by the time specified by the timeval
48.Fa delta .
49If
50.Fa delta
51is negative, the clock is slowed down by incrementing it more slowly
52than normal until the correction is complete.
53If
54.Fa delta
55is positive, a larger increment than normal is used.
56The skew used to perform the correction is generally a fraction of one percent.
57Thus, the time is always a monotonically increasing function.
58A time correction from an earlier call to
59.Fn adjtime
60may not be finished when
61.Fn adjtime
62is called again.
63If
64.Fa delta
65is null, no adjustment is done.
66If
67.Fa olddelta
68is non-null, the structure pointed to will contain, upon return, the
69number of microseconds still to be corrected from the earlier call.
70.Pp
71This call may be used by time servers that synchronize the clocks
72of computers in a local area network.
73Such time servers would slow down the clocks of some machines
74and speed up the clocks of others to bring them to the average network time.
75.Pp
76Only the superuser may adjust the time using the
77.Fn adjtime
78function.
79.Sh RETURN VALUES
80A return value of 0 indicates that the call succeeded.
81A return value of \-1 indicates that an error occurred, and in this
82case an error code is stored in the global variable
83.Va errno .
84.Sh ERRORS
85.Fn adjtime
86will fail if:
87.Bl -tag -width Er
88.It Bq Er EFAULT
89Either of the arguments point outside the process's allocated address space.
90.It Bq Er EPERM
91The
92.Fn delta
93argument is non-null and the process's effective user ID is not that
94of the superuser.
95.El
96.Sh SEE ALSO
97.Xr date 1 ,
98.Xr adjfreq 2 ,
99.Xr gettimeofday 2 ,
100.Xr ntpd 8 ,
101.Xr timed 8 ,
102.Xr timedc 8
103.Rs
104.%T "TSP: The Time Synchronization Protocol for UNIX 4.3BSD"
105.%A R. Gusella
106.%A S. Zatti
107.Re
108.Sh HISTORY
109The
110.Fn adjtime
111function call appeared in
112.Bx 4.3 .
113.Sh CAVEATS
114Other operating systems restrict calling
115.Nm
116to the superuser and might not allow requesting the current
117correction without specifying a new value.
118