[collectd] long sleeps when using collectd and ntpd

[Dave Cottlehuber]

On 24. September 2013 at 10:56:07, danta (mertelo1 at axsguard.net) wrote:
>
>We have some problems using collectd and ntpd.
>
>Whenever ntpd sets the clock in the past (because of a clock drift),
>collectd sleeps until it is back at it's 'normal' time.
>To give an example:
>- Suppose it's 10:00am,
>- ntpd sees a large clock drift and set the clock to 09:45am
>- collectd will sleep till 10:00am
>
>When trying to debug the problem, we found that the do_loop function in
>collectd.c determines the amount of time to sleep based on times
>abtained from the "gettimeofday" function. Was this a design choice?
>Wouldn't it be better to use a monotonic clock?
>
>Greetz,
>Lode

Hi Lode

I can't answer for collectd but this doesn't sound like the correct usage for ntpd.

Is the large drift an example, & the timescale is a few seconds delay? 

Your ntpd should use a driftfile which over time will keep things in line most of the time, even if your ntpd servers are temporarily unavailable.

Are these VMs that are being hibernated or similar? If so, use host clock sync and not ntpd. Obviously the hosts will use ntpd though!

A+
Dave