linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v2 0/4] hv_util: adjust system time smoothly

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Date:   Mon, 9 Jan 2017 22:27:44 +0100 (CET)
From:   Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>
To:     Vitaly Kuznetsov <vkuznets@...hat.com>
cc:     devel@...uxdriverproject.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        "K. Y. Srinivasan" <kys@...rosoft.com>,
        Haiyang Zhang <haiyangz@...rosoft.com>,
        John Stultz <john.stultz@...aro.org>,
        Alex Ng <alexng@...rosoft.com>,
        Stephen Hemminger <stephen@...workplumber.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 0/4] hv_util: adjust system time smoothly

On Wed, 4 Jan 2017, Vitaly Kuznetsov wrote:

> Changes since v1:
> - do do_settimeofday64() when ICTIMESYNCFLAG_SYNC flag is present in the
>   request (Alex Ng)
> - add pr_debug() for the case when do_adjtimex() fails (Alex Ng)
> 
> Original description:
> 
> With TimeSync version 4 protocol support we started updating system time
> continuously through the whole lifetime of Hyper-V guests. Every 5 seconds
> there is a time sample from the host which triggers do_settimeofday[64]().
> While the time from the host is very accurate such adjustments may cause
> issues:
> - Time is jumping forward and backward, some applications may misbehave.
> - In case an NTP client is run in parallel things may go south, e.g. when
>   an NTP client tries to adjust tick/frequency with ADJ_TICK/ADJ_FREQUENCY
>   the Hyper-V module will not see this changes and time will oscillate and
>   never converge.
> - Systemd starts annoying you by printing "Time has been changed" every 5
>   seconds to the system log.
> 
> With this series I suggest to use do_adjtimex() to adjust time. My tests
> show that such method gives equally good time convergence but avoids all
> the drawbacks described above.

To be honest, I think all of this is just tinkering.

1) do_adjtimex() is assuming that there is a single client connected which
   is responsible for the updates. So I seriously doubt that a NTP client
   running in the guest will cooperate nicely with that timesync magic
   under all circumstances.

2) There is still the possibility to force do_settimeofday() calls which
   will upset NTP clients and have other side effects.

   Why is this call necessary at all? Just because it's in some spec?

3) What happens if you have a PTP capable network card mapped into your
   guest and the guest uses PTP for time synchronization? The outcome is
   predictible: CRAP.

I can see the value for a host wide time synchronization, but please use
mechanisms which do not interfere with the rest of the time eco system in
Linux.

The timesync thing happens periodically every 5 seconds, which you can feed
nicely into the PPS subsystem and then the guest side NTP daemon can
utilize it (or not).

Thanks,

	tglx