Re: sys_settimeofday()

Eilert Brinkmann (eilert@informatik.uni-bremen.de)
07 Dec 1999 21:39:47 +0100


David Mosberger <davidm@hpl.hp.com> wrote:
> Can anyone think of a good reason as to why sys_settimeofday() should
> not update the hardware clock (aka RTC) as well?

I think there is no good reason why settimeofday *should* update the
RTC. This is not desired in all cases and changing an existing system
call might cause problems with software expecting the old semantics.

> One possible reason is if different OSes have a different idea of what
> the "epoch" is (as is the case on the Alpha, for example), but this is
> not an issue in the particular case I'm interested in, so I'm
> wondering if there are any other reasons. Fundamentally, I think it's
> needlessly confusing for a user to have to remember to update the
> hardware clock separately.

If this functionality is really needed, it seems to me that it would
be a cleaner (and easy to implement) solution to put it in the user
level program used to change the date, not in the kernel.

Eilert

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
       Eilert Brinkmann -- Universitaet Bremen -- FB 3, Informatik
eilert@informatik.uni-bremen.de - eilert@tzi.org - eilert@linuxfreak.com
              http://www.informatik.uni-bremen.de/~eilert/

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