[Dovecot] Time moved backwards errors

[Tom Diehl]

On Fri, 3 Apr 2009, Noel Butler wrote:

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

If you are responding to me (it is hard to tell when you top post) I am
running ntpd. I still have the problem described below. I have never used the
-g option but the Red Hat init scripts call ntpdate at startup before ntpd
starts. In reading the man pg, it would appear that I should get the same
results as using the -g switch, since the -g switch only allows 1 large
adjustment of the system time.

Regards,

-- 
Tom Diehl		tdiehl at rogueind.com		Spamtrap address mtd123 at rogueind.com



>
>
> 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,
>