Sync Your Clocks

Sunday, February 12, 2006 - Comments (1)
Category: Software Engineering | Technology

Flavor Flav knows what time it is. He wears a clock around his neck to help.

A common problem I have encountered in software development and testing is clock synchronization. Internal computer clock time will drift to inaccurate values even when initially set accurately. PC clock circuits only cost a few cents to make and are notorious for becoming wrong over time.

This causes a variety of problems. Developers on Unix systems like to use the 'make' command. This command compiles new and modified code without having to recompile unchanged code. It uses the clock to deteremine which files need to be recompiled. If source code resides on a separate server and the clocks are not synchronized then the make program will not work correctly.

Another problem manifested by unsynchronized clocks is correlating test results. Imagine running a load test on system where the client, database server and application server all have different times. Someone trying to analyze the results of the test will go cross-eyed trying to examine critical events in the test. I have seen this problem at two different companies now.

A network time server should be used to keep every computer's time in sync. The most used solution for clock synchronization is the Network Time Protocol (NTP). It utilizes a client/server architecture based on UDP message passing. Fortunately, it is also built into the latest versions of Windows and most Linux distributions.

In order to keep your clock in sync in Windows right-click on the date/time in the task-bar. Now click on 'Adjust Date/Time'. Now click on the 'Internet Time' tab. Yeeeeaaaahhhh Booooyyyy!

Posted at 3:25 PM