[Patches] [ python-Patches-1607149 ] bug# 1607041: Condition.wait timeout fails on clock change

Sun Feb 11 10:03:34 CET 2007

Patches item #1607149, was opened at 2006-12-01 23:32
Message generated for change (Comment added) made by loewis
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Category: Library (Lib)
Group: Python 2.4
Status: Open
Resolution: None
Priority: 5
Private: No
Submitted By: BC (hashstat)
Assigned to: Nobody/Anonymous (nobody)
Summary: bug# 1607041: Condition.wait timeout fails on clock change

Initial Comment:
This patch if for bug# 1607041.

If the system clock is adjusted after Condition.wait is called with a timeout, the timeout does not expire as expected. This appears to be due to the threading.Condition class using the system clock to calculate the timeout expiration without taking system clock changes into account.

No matter what timeout is used, setting the system clock ahead reduces or eliminates the wait while setting the system clock back increases the wait.  So if the clock is set back one hour in the middle of a 1 microsecond wait (c.wait(1)), wait will return in an hour and 1 microsecond rather than after 1 microsecond.

This patch modifies the Condition classes wait method to check for variations in the clock between calls to sleep and ajust for abnormalities.

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>Comment By: Martin v. Löwis (loewis)
Date: 2007-02-11 10:03

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Indeed, you would have issues with file stamps changing on Windows NT+ if
the file system is FAT. However, this is not because the system time moves
forth and back, but because FAT time stamps get reinterpreted according to
the current time zone, not according to the time zone in force when the
file was created (as NT tries to convert the FAT time stamps to UTC). On
NTFS, this is not an issue, as NTFS file stamps are in UTC already (units
of 100ns since Jan 1, 1601).

So indeed, the submitter complains that Condition.wait doesn't time out
correctly if the system clock is changed while the wait occurs. I think it
is reasonable to make this complaint, however, I don't like to the patch
proposed, and I do think this can't really be fixed without the help of the
operating system (so I wouldn't mind if it was unfixed on systems that
don't help). The point is that .wait() really takes a duration, not a time
stamp, for timeout, and we should honor that. The duration should expire
after the given amount of physical time has passed, independent of the
system clock. As I said, one way to implement this would be to use a
monotonic clock if the system has one.

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Comment By: Josiah Carlson (josiahcarlson)
Date: 2007-02-10 21:42

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Hrm.  I know I've had issues with file modification times "changing"
during a DST change on Windows in a Python process, but that may be due to
Python only checking the timezone at startup.

What you are saying sounds suspiciously like, "don't change the system
clock when your program is running", which seems reasonable to me.

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Comment By: Martin v. Löwis (loewis)
Date: 2007-02-10 20:26

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DST is irrelevant for this discussion. On WIndows NT+, the system clock
(as returned by libc ftime/windows GetSystemTime) is always in UTC (broken
down to a Gregorian date). It is thus not affected by DST changes.

What does matter for this bug is administrator changes to the system time
(like manual changes), and time adjustments due to NTP (although the
Windows NTP implementation will perform a non-monototic change only during
boot, AFAIK).

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Comment By: Josiah Carlson (josiahcarlson)
Date: 2007-02-10 19:02

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Really, it would be better if time.sleep was based off of a monotonic
clock, then everything could use the single working API, and we wouldn't
need to monkey-patch everything that uses sleep.

Unfortunately, due to the insanity that is the underlying Windows
platform, the bios clock is set to local time and is converted to UTC
(which is then used natively by NT).  There is a work-around involving
setting the system clock to UTC and setting a registry setting, but it
doesn't always work, can cause 100% CPU usage during DST changes, and
doesn't propagate time changes from NT to the underlying clock.

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/mswish/ut-rtc.html

An alternate (or additional option) is to just disable DST changes,
manually adjust times as necessary (or using a script that runs only at
boot), and never run any software while adjusting the time.

http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/thread-531048-2.php

Considering the recent changes to DST, the latter link is probably more
applicable.

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Comment By: Martin v. Löwis (loewis)
Date: 2006-12-03 08:11

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It would be better if this was based on a monotonic clock if available on
the system (such as the  POSIX CLOCK_MONOTONIC argument to clock_gettime).
"Guessing" jumps in the time is inherently unreliable; in your code, you
won't notice changes that involve less than 10s.

Notice that the same problem exists for Thread.join; it would be good if
they were fixed together.

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