NAME
clock_gettime,
clock_settime, clock_getres
— get/set/calibrate date and
time
SYNOPSIS
#include
<time.h>
int
clock_gettime(clockid_t
clock_id, struct timespec
*tp);
int
clock_settime(clockid_t
clock_id, const struct
timespec *tp);
int
clock_getres(clockid_t
clock_id, struct timespec
*tp);
DESCRIPTION
The
clock_gettime()
and
clock_settime()
functions allow the calling process to retrieve or set the value used by a
clock which is specified by clock_id.
clock_id can be a value from clock_getcpuclockid(3) or pthread_getcpuclockid(3) or one of five predefined values:
CLOCK_REALTIME- time that increments as a wall clock should
CLOCK_PROCESS_CPUTIME_ID- time that increments when the CPU is running in user or kernel mode on behalf of the calling process
CLOCK_THREAD_CPUTIME_ID- time that increments when the CPU is running in user or kernel mode on behalf of the calling thread
CLOCK_MONOTONIC- time that increments as a wall clock should but whose absolute value is meaningless and cannot jump, providing accurate realtime interval measurement, even across suspend and resume
CLOCK_UPTIME- time whose absolute value is the time the system has been running and not suspended, providing accurate uptime measurement, both absolute and interval
The structure pointed to by tp is defined in
<sys/time.h> as:
struct timespec {
time_t tv_sec; /* seconds */
long tv_nsec; /* and nanoseconds */
};
Only the CLOCK_REALTIME clock can be set,
and only the superuser may do so. If the system securelevel is greater than
1 (see init(8)), the time may only be advanced. This limitation is imposed
to prevent a malicious superuser from setting arbitrary time stamps on
files. The system time can still be adjusted backwards using the
adjtime(2) system call even when the system is secure.
The resolution (granularity) of a clock is
returned by the
clock_getres()
call. This value is placed in a (non-null) *tp.
RETURN VALUES
Upon successful completion, the value 0 is returned; otherwise the value -1 is returned and the global variable errno is set to indicate the error.
ERRORS
clock_gettime(),
clock_settime(), and
clock_getres() will fail if:
- [
EINVAL] - clock_id is not a valid value.
- [
EFAULT] - The tp argument address referenced invalid memory.
In addition, clock_settime() may return
the following errors:
- [
EPERM] - A user other than the superuser attempted to set the time.
- [
EINVAL] - clock_id specifies a clock that isn't settable, tp specifies a nanosecond value less than zero or greater than 1000 million, or a value outside the range of the specified clock.
SEE ALSO
date(1), adjtime(2), getitimer(2), gettimeofday(2), clock_getcpuclockid(3), ctime(3), pthread_getcpuclockid(3)
STANDARDS
The clock_getres(),
clock_gettime(), and
clock_settime() functions conform to
IEEE Std 1003.1-2008 (“POSIX.1”).
The CLOCK_UPTIME clock is an extension to
that.
HISTORY
The CLOCK_PROCESS_CPUTIME_ID and
CLOCK_THREAD_CPUTIME_ID clocks appeared in
OpenBSD 5.4. The
CLOCK_UPTIME clock first appeared in
FreeBSD 7.0 and was added to
OpenBSD in OpenBSD 5.5.