(monotonic vs wall) clock issues

[Volker Eckert]

hi all,

consider an embedded system without a real-time clock, on which the wall clock 
is set later (after monit starts). especially in such an environment it would 
be great if monit weren't using the wall clock for time differences, but the 
monotonic one.

in order to achieve that, i wrote the attached patch which might be helpful for 
somebody in a similar situation. it's not terribly well tested and i think it 
won't work on OS X (which doesn't allow pthread_condattr_setclock(), IIRC). i 
wanted to fix that but didn't find time. it should apply against the 5.15 
release.
signed-off-by: volker.eckert <TA> gmx.net



even if you don't end up applying this, two more independent questions:

1. according to man (5) proc, /proc/<PID>/stat's starttime is in clock ticks, 
so e. g.

src/process.c:117:
s->inf->priv.process.uptime = Time_now() - pt[leaf].starttime;

should have shown a completely wrong value, as Time_now() returns the wall 
(real-) time clock - (how has this ever worked?) - or am i missing something?



2. src/process/process_common.c:get_float_time():
the comment says '@return time in seconds' but the actual value is in units of 
[100ms]:
return (double) t.tv_sec * 10 + (double) t.tv_usec / 100000.0;

it might not make a difference, after all, just saying it's confusing.


and lastly a feature request:
there is already 'EXEC' as an action. it would be helpful to have something 
like 'EXEC_ONCE' as well (execute only once), which i had to emulate in a bit 
awkward fashion (in the executed script). maybe there is a better way to 
achieve that, in which case it would be nice if that were more obvious.


thanks,
volker

monit-use_monotonic_time.patch
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