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Event timestamps in WY_stat

On GNU/Linux systems the events generated by the ‘WY_stat’ thread may appear to happen one second prior to their scheduled time. This happens if the software reporting the events uses time(2) instead of gettimeofday(2) for time reporting. The internal timekeeping mechanism of the linux kernel is designed so that the number of seconds returned by time may be one less than the tv_sec value after return from gettimeofday, if the two functions would be called the same instant10.

The two known cases are the legacy syslogd used by default on Slackware systems, and the Sendmail MTA.

Since the results returned by gettimeofday are more accurate, it was decided to leave this feature as it is, instead of installing workarounds of dubious nature just to satisfy older software.

Footnotes

(10)

See https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22917318/time-and-gettimeofday-return-different-seconds, for details

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