.\" $OpenBSD: adjtime.2,v 1.25 2019/03/26 16:02:54 cheloha Exp $ .\" $NetBSD: adjtime.2,v 1.5 1995/10/12 15:40:44 jtc Exp $ .\" .\" Copyright (c) 1980, 1991, 1993 .\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. .\" .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions .\" are met: .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. .\" 3. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors .\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software .\" without specific prior written permission. .\" .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND .\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE .\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE .\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE .\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL .\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS .\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) .\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT .\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY .\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF .\" SUCH DAMAGE. .\" .\" @(#)adjtime.2 8.1 (Berkeley) 6/4/93 .\" .Dd $Mdocdate: March 26 2019 $ .Dt ADJTIME 2 .Os .Sh NAME .Nm adjtime .Nd correct the time to allow synchronization of the system clock .Sh SYNOPSIS .In sys/time.h .Ft int .Fn adjtime "const struct timeval *delta" "struct timeval *olddelta" .Sh DESCRIPTION .Fn adjtime makes small adjustments to the system time, as returned by .Xr gettimeofday 2 , advancing or retarding it by the time specified by the timeval .Fa delta . If .Fa delta is negative, the clock is slowed down by incrementing it more slowly than normal until the correction is complete. If .Fa delta is positive, a larger increment than normal is used. The skew used to perform the correction is generally a fraction of one percent. Thus, the time is always a monotonically increasing function. A time correction from an earlier call to .Fn adjtime may not be finished when .Fn adjtime is called again. If .Fa delta is .Dv NULL , no adjustment is done. If .Fa olddelta is .Pf non- Dv NULL , the number of microseconds still to be corrected from the earlier call is stored into .Pf * Fa olddelta . Setting the time with .Xr settimeofday 2 cancels any in-progress time adjustment. .Pp This call may be used by time servers that synchronize the clocks of computers in a local area network. Such time servers would slow down the clocks of some machines and speed up the clocks of others to bring them to the average network time. .Pp Only the superuser may adjust the time using the .Fn adjtime function. .Sh RETURN VALUES .Rv -std .Sh ERRORS .Fn adjtime will fail if: .Bl -tag -width Er .It Bq Er EFAULT Either of the arguments point outside the process's allocated address space. .It Bq Er EINVAL The .Fa delta argument is .Pf non- Dv NULL and specifies a microsecond value less than zero or greater than or equal to one million. .It Bq Er EINVAL The .Fa delta argument is .Pf non- Dv NULL and represents an adjustment greater than .Dv INT64_MAX microseconds or less than .Dv INT64_MIN microseconds. .It Bq Er EPERM The .Fa delta argument is .Pf non- Dv NULL and the process's effective user ID is not that of the superuser. .El .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr date 1 , .Xr adjfreq 2 , .Xr gettimeofday 2 , .Xr ntpd 8 .Sh HISTORY The .Fn adjtime function call appeared in .Bx 4.3 . .Sh CAVEATS Other operating systems restrict calling .Fn adjtime to the superuser and might not allow requesting the current correction without specifying a new value.