Topic: Cron errors using NTP time

[Arend]

Hi, yesterday I added an NTP time source in the E-smith manager.  Since then I have started getting cron errors mailed to me that are as follows:

ERROR: illegal attempt to update using time 1000278243 when last update time is 1000278243 (minimum one second step)

Does anyone know what might be wrong?  Could the internal time on the server be going too fast and then the NTP time is setting it back?  All the errors are as a result of a cron job that runs either /usr/bin/meminfo.pl or cpuinfo.pl

Thanks for any help.
Arend

[DJ_Ramjet99]

Hi Arend,

I am getting this same problem as well. Did anyone come back with an answer for it ?

[Arend]

No, I have not had any responses.  I am still getting the error messages.
Arend

[Rob Hillis]

Arend wrote:

> Hi, yesterday I added an NTP time source in the E-smith
> manager.  Since then I have started getting cron errors
> mailed to me that are as follows:
> ERROR: illegal attempt to update using time 1000278243 when
> last update time is 1000278243 (minimum one second step)
> Does anyone know what might be wrong?  Could the internal
> time on the server be going too fast and then the NTP time is
> setting it back?  All the errors are as a result of a cron
> job that runs either /usr/bin/meminfo.pl or cpuinfo.pl

These modules are used by the e-smith-monitor module recently released. (My abject apologies to the person who released it - your name has escaped me for the moment)  On my system, these error messages are infrequent (on average 4-5 in a block every few days)

I'm not aware of whether there's a fix to this problem available yet.

[DJ_Ramjet99]

Yikes,

I am getting one every three to five minutes (500 and counting since install). Still I guess that will teach me to use a test box in a production environment. Mainly because the mail is supposed to be going to root@server.company.co.nz but is instead being directed to root@server.server = bounce around going on. Ah well, better go and shut it down.
Still, an explanation/fix for NTP and Cron problems would be neat so I donr make the same mistake again.

Regards all,

[Jaime]

Hi all,

  I'm one of the developers of e-smith-monitor (BTW, my name is Jaime Nebrera )) We are very sorry about this. We don't follow the list with the same frecuency as the developers list

This used to happen under two circumstances:

    1) In a system under very heavy load, specially if using older versions of the package. Sometimes the system can't keep up and will try to update the database ticw in the same second.

    2) If you set back the time from, say 2:00 to 1:58 manually or under a very unreliable NTP server environment.

  BOTH circunstances have been solved in the latest release 2.1-01. Please update.

  We consider this is a production ready release as only a minor security problem has not been fixed but has no effect as the script doesn't accept data.

  Regards.

[Alan Daley]

This is an old thread, but I am having the same problem with a newly upgraded 5.5 server (from 4.1.1 to 5.5. update 2.) Everything seemed OK to that point, but after enabling NTP, I now get a flood of messages from cron saying "ERROR: illegal attempt to update using time 1035218821 when last update time is 1037653440 (minimum one second step)". This is happening for /usr/bin/netinfo.pl, cpuinfo.pl, and meminfo.pl. Disabling NTP again, rebooting, etc. didn't help. Does anyone know a fix for this?