[Dovecot] Time moved backwards errors

[Peter Hessler]

time should *never* move backwards.  OSes (and programs)  assume time is
always moving forward.  Injure your VPS provider.


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.
:
:Reading the TimeMovedBackwards article on the Dovecot wiki, and the kernel mailing list thread referred to on it, it would seem quite apparent that this is caused by a failure of the gettimeofday() function to reliably return the correct value.
:
:If anyone has any advice as to how I could proceed to fix this (I currently have a watch on the Dovecot service which restarts it after any failures) or how I should best phrase this to get it resolved 'upstream' by the VPS provider, I would be very grateful.
:
:Thank you,
:
:Patrick Vale
:

-- 
Valerie: Aww, Tom, you're going maudlin on me ...
Tom:	 I reserve the right to wax maudlin as I wane eloquent ...
		-- Tom Chapin