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adjtime(3)               Library Functions Manual              adjtime(3)
       adjtime - correct the time to synchronize the system clock
       Standard C library (libc, -lc)
       #include <sys/time.h>
       int adjtime(const struct timeval *delta, struct timeval *olddelta);
   Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see
   feature_test_macros(7)):
       adjtime():
           Since glibc 2.19:
               _DEFAULT_SOURCE
           glibc 2.19 and earlier:
               _BSD_SOURCE
       The adjtime() function gradually adjusts the system clock (as
       returned by gettimeofday(2)).  The amount of time by which the
       clock is to be adjusted is specified in the structure pointed to
       by delta.  This structure has the following form:
           struct timeval {
               time_t      tv_sec;     /* seconds */
               suseconds_t tv_usec;    /* microseconds */
           };
       If the adjustment in delta is positive, then the system clock is
       speeded up by some small percentage (i.e., by adding a small
       amount of time to the clock value in each second) until the
       adjustment has been completed.  If the adjustment in delta is
       negative, then the clock is slowed down in a similar fashion.
       If a clock adjustment from an earlier adjtime() call is already in
       progress at the time of a later adjtime() call, and delta is not
       NULL for the later call, then the earlier adjustment is stopped,
       but any already completed part of that adjustment is not undone.
       If olddelta is not NULL, then the buffer that it points to is used
       to return the amount of time remaining from any previous
       adjustment that has not yet been completed.
       On success, adjtime() returns 0.  On failure, -1 is returned, and
       errno is set to indicate the error.
       EINVAL The adjustment in delta is outside the permitted range.
       EPERM  The caller does not have sufficient privilege to adjust the
              time.  Under Linux, the CAP_SYS_TIME capability is
              required.
       For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see
       attributes(7).
       ┌──────────────────────────────────────┬───────────────┬─────────┐
       │ Interface                            │ Attribute     │ Value   │
       ├──────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────┼─────────┤
       │ adjtime()                            │ Thread safety │ MT-Safe │
       └──────────────────────────────────────┴───────────────┴─────────┘
       None.
       4.3BSD, System V.
       The adjustment that adjtime() makes to the clock is carried out in
       such a manner that the clock is always monotonically increasing.
       Using adjtime() to adjust the time prevents the problems that
       could be caused for certain applications (e.g., make(1)) by abrupt
       positive or negative jumps in the system time.
       adjtime() is intended to be used to make small adjustments to the
       system time.  Most systems impose a limit on the adjustment that
       can be specified in delta.  In the glibc implementation, delta
       must be less than or equal to (INT_MAX / 1000000 - 2) and greater
       than or equal to (INT_MIN / 1000000 + 2) (respectively 2145 and
       -2145 seconds on i386).
       A longstanding bug meant that if delta was specified as NULL, no
       valid information about the outstanding clock adjustment was
       returned in olddelta.  (In this circumstance, adjtime() should
       return the outstanding clock adjustment, without changing it.)
       This bug is fixed on systems with glibc 2.8 or later and Linux
       kernel 2.6.26 or later.
       adjtimex(2), gettimeofday(2), time(7)
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Linux man-pages 6.15            2025-05-17                     adjtime(3)
Pages that refer to this page: adjtimex(2), clock_getres(2), timeval(3type), time(7)