xref: /original-bsd/lib/libc/sys/adjtime.2 (revision c3e32dec)
1.\" Copyright (c) 1980, 1991, 1993
2.\"	The Regents of the University of California.  All rights reserved.
3.\"
4.\" %sccs.include.redist.man%
5.\"
6.\"     @(#)adjtime.2	8.1 (Berkeley) 06/04/93
7.\"
8.Dd
9.Dt ADJTIME 2
10.Os BSD 4.3
11.Sh NAME
12.Nm adjtime
13.Nd "correct the time to allow synchronization of the system clock"
14.Sh SYNOPSIS
15.Fd #include <sys/time.h>
16.Ft int
17.Fn adjtime "struct timeval *delta" "struct timeval *olddelta"
18.Sh DESCRIPTION
19.Fn Adjtime
20makes small adjustments to the system time, as returned by
21.Xr gettimeofday 2 ,
22advancing or retarding it
23by the time specified by the timeval
24.Fa delta .
25If
26.Fa delta
27is negative, the clock is
28slowed down by incrementing it more slowly than normal until
29the correction is complete.
30If
31.Fa delta
32is positive, a larger increment than normal
33is used.
34The skew used to perform the correction is generally a fraction of one percent.
35Thus, the time is always
36a monotonically increasing function.
37A time correction from an earlier call to
38.Fn adjtime
39may not be finished when
40.Fn adjtime
41is called again.
42If
43.Fa olddelta
44is non-nil,
45the structure pointed to will contain, upon return, the
46number of microseconds still to be corrected
47from the earlier call.
48.Pp
49This call may be used by time servers that synchronize the clocks
50of computers in a local area network.
51Such time servers would slow down the clocks of some machines
52and speed up the clocks of others to bring them to the average network time.
53.Pp
54The call
55.Fn adjtime
56is restricted to the super-user.
57.Sh RETURN VALUES
58A return value of 0 indicates that the call succeeded.
59A return value of -1 indicates that an error occurred, and in this
60case an error code is stored in the global variable
61.Va errno .
62.Sh ERRORS
63.Fn Adjtime
64will fail if:
65.Bl -tag -width Er
66.It Bq Er EFAULT
67An argument points outside the process's allocated address space.
68.It Bq Er EPERM
69The process's effective user ID is not that of the super-user.
70.El
71.Sh SEE ALSO
72.Xr date 1 ,
73.Xr gettimeofday 2 ,
74.Xr timed 8 ,
75.Xr timedc 8 ,
76.Rs
77.%T "TSP: The Time Synchronization Protocol for UNIX 4.3BSD"
78.%A R. Gusella
79.%A S. Zatti
80.Re
81.Sh HISTORY
82The
83.Nm
84function call appeared in
85.Bx 4.3 .
86