Re: maildir in Gnus vs. clock corrections and PID recycling

[Matthias Andree <ma@dt.e-technik.uni-dortmund.de>]

prj@po.cwru.edu (Paul Jarc) writes:

> No.  It means the clock would be run slow *all the time*, to keep it
> from getting ahead in the first place.  This is how clockspeed works.

clockspeed is imperfect and assumes the oscillator runs at the same
temperature all the time, or it relies on getting outside input.

ntpd relies on outside input.

If this outside input is unavailable, because your receiver is faulty,
the transmission is jammed, the network blacked out, then the clocks
will start drifting, and it may have drifted some seconds when the
clocks can be synchronized again. You can't prevent that, but software
should be prepared to deal with it.

How gracefully the software deals with this condition, is up to the
programmer, but overwriting existing files with different content is
certainly not desirable in any case.

>> It'd be fine with me if the program would just complain, the ultime
>> goal is avoiding EVER overwriting a file.
>
> I'll probably add that too.

Thank you.

-- 
Matthias Andree