RFD: tickadj way too small?

Ulrich Windl (ulrich.windl@rz.uni-regensburg.de)
Thu, 22 Apr 1999 10:45:11 +0200


Hello,

I donīt know what the initial reasoning for "500/HZ" was, but I think
the value for tickadj is way too small in the Linux kernels.

(tickadj limits the speed of a adjtime() system call)

The current rate is 0.5ms per second. Thus a correction of 128ms
needs 256s, almost 5 minutes. A correction of one second (not unusual
if the computer was powered down for a day) almost needs half an hour.

The current rate of 0.05% (500PPM) is too slow in most cases. Many
systems use much larger values.

I'm suggesting to boost the value of tickadj by a factor of 100.
Therefore tickadj will be 50000/HZ, 500 for i386. This will result in
a correction of 50ms per second (5%).

(My PPSkits added the ability to adjust the value of tickadj during
runtime, but we need a reasonable default for most cases. BTW:
thereīs an additional patch to fix compilation problems on i386 with
PPSkit-0.6.0: PPSkit-0.6.0-add-1.diff.gz, available at the usual
sites since this morning)

I'm not subscribed to this list, but I'm willing to accept any
contributions regarding this thread. If nobody objects, I'll put a
higher value in the next PPSkit, and finally I'll suggest a patch for
the stable kernel.

Regards,
Ulrich
P.S.: I'm suggesting to merge PPSkit-0.6 into the upcoming Linux 2.3
tree. Currently FreeBSD is way ahead in timekeeping (according to Mr
Mills and Mr. Kamp)...

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