linux-kernel - Re: Setting monotonic time?

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Date:   Mon, 1 Oct 2018 20:52:41 +0200 (CEST)
From:   Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>
To:     "Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@...ssion.com>
cc:     Andrey Vagin <avagin@...tuozzo.com>,
        Dmitry Safonov <dima@...sta.com>,
        "linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org" <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        Dmitry Safonov <0x7f454c46@...il.com>,
        Adrian Reber <adrian@...as.de>,
        Andy Lutomirski <luto@...nel.org>,
        Christian Brauner <christian.brauner@...ntu.com>,
        Cyrill Gorcunov <gorcunov@...nvz.org>,
        "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>, Ingo Molnar <mingo@...hat.com>,
        Jeff Dike <jdike@...toit.com>, Oleg Nesterov <oleg@...hat.com>,
        Pavel Emelianov <xemul@...tuozzo.com>,
        Shuah Khan <shuah@...nel.org>,
        "containers@...ts.linux-foundation.org" 
        <containers@...ts.linux-foundation.org>,
        "criu@...nvz.org" <criu@...nvz.org>,
        "linux-api@...r.kernel.org" <linux-api@...r.kernel.org>,
        "x86@...nel.org" <x86@...nel.org>,
        Alexey Dobriyan <adobriyan@...il.com>,
        "linux-kselftest@...r.kernel.org" <linux-kselftest@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: Setting monotonic time?

On Mon, 1 Oct 2018, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
> In the context of process migration there is a simpler subproblem that I
> think it is worth exploring if we can do something about.
> 
> For a cluster of machines all running with synchronized
> clocks. CLOCK_REALTIME matches. CLOCK_MONOTNIC does not match between
> machines.   Not having a matching CLOCK_MONOTONIC prevents successful
> process migration between nodes in that cluster.
> 
> Would it be possible to allow setting CLOCK_MONOTONIC at the very
> beginning of time?  So that all of the nodes in a cluster can be in
> sync?
> 
> No change in skew just in offset for CLOCK_MONOTONIC.
> 
> There are also dragons involved in coordinating things so that
> CLOCK_MONOTONIC gets set before CLOCK_MONOTONIC gets used.  So I don't
> know if allowing CLOCK_MONOTONIC to be set would be practical but it
> seems work exploring all on it's own.

It's used very early on in the kernel, so that would be a major surprise
for many things including user space which has expectations on clock
monotonic.

It would be reasonably easy to add CLOCK_MONONOTIC_SYNC which can be set in
the way you described and then in name spaces make it possible to magically
map CLOCK_MONOTONIC to CLOCK_MONOTONIC_SYNC.

It still wouldn't allow to have different NTP/PTP time domains, but might
be a good start to address the main migration headaches.

Thanks,

	tglx