[Dovecot] Time moved backwards errors

[Noel Butler]

Why not just run ntpd and be done with it, ensure you start ntpd with
"-g" option


On Fri, 2009-04-03 at 03:11, Tom Diehl wrote:

> On Thu, 2 Apr 2009, Mark Hedges wrote:
> 
> >
> >
> > On 2009 Apr 02 (Thu) at 12:49:43 +0100 (+0100), Bloke wrote:
> >> Hello,
> >>
> >> I am experiencing a number of 'Time moved backwards errors' such as:
> >>
> >> Mar 27 11:38:20 host-78-129-239-60 dovecot: imap-login: Time just moved backwards by 729 seconds. This might cause a lot of problems, so I'll just kill myself now. http://wiki.dovecot.org/TimeMovedBackwards
> >> Mar 27 15:20:10 host-78-129-239-60 dovecot: Time just moved backwards by 4214 seconds. This might cause a lot of problems, so I'll just kill myself now. http://wiki.dovecot.org/TimeMovedBackwards
> >> Mar 29 11:08:59 host-78-129-239-60 dovecot: imap-login: Time just moved backwards by 4341 seconds. This might cause a lot of problems, so I'll just kill myself now. http://wiki.dovecot.org/TimeMovedBackwards
> >>
> >> on my Centos 5.2 openvz - based VPS
> >>
> >> I have raised the issue with my VPS provider, who are
> >> responding that 'the jury is still out' as to whether this
> >> is a system, or Dovecot problem.
> >
> > FWIW I saw this the other day on a real-machine CentOS 5.2
> > system after a severe crash in which the system put all the
> > drives into read-only mode.  The machine had to be
> > power-cycled and dovecot complained the clock was off by 5
> > minutes.  Maybe something else going on with the 2.6.18
> > kernel?  Dunno.
> 
> I see this all of the time on an EL4 machine when it is under high load.
> The clock is synced to ntp but I still get dovecot killing itself. 
> Sometimes ntp looses sync but not always.
> 
> I have a cronjob check every 5 minutes to see if dovecot is running and if
> not restart it. I know that is not the right answer and I hate things like that
> but until I figure out how to fix it or upgrade the machine (coming soon) I
> will live with it.
> 
> I am just throwing this out in case it means anything to someone else.
> 
> FWIW dovecot version == dovecot-1.0.3-14
> 
> Regards,