64bit time_t problem?

[Brad Knowles]

At 5:41 AM +0900 2004-08-29, Hiroki Sato wrote:

>  m> AFAIK it's an NTP "issue" - your system is required to be within a
>  m> number of years of "now" for it to be set.  Trawl
>  m> comp.protocols.time.ntp for details, or see the NTP documentation
>  m> on the NTP website (www.ntp.org) where I remember this being
>  m> discussed in the last few months (sorry I can't be more precise).
>
>   Thanks for the pointer.  I will look into them.

	You definitely don't want to try to use NTP to set the time if 
the offset is too large.  Modern versions of ntpd can make a one-time 
stepping change if you add the "-g" option on the command line, but 
even that can only take you so far.  While FreeBSD on sparc64 might 
now have a 64-bit time_t, but I don't know that the protocol can 
handle this large of a difference.

	Try setting the date manually to something reasonably close 
(i.e., less than 136 years), then using ntpd to get the "real" time.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad at stop.mail-abuse.org>

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
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     -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
     Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

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