[erlang-bugs] R15B01 erlang:now() jumping ~24 days into the future

Garret Smith garret.smith@REDACTED
Mon Mar 11 17:34:01 CET 2013


Patrik,

Our production systems are on R15B1/2, so I won't be able to verify against
that, but I'll let you know what I see running my test program against R16B.

Will you be able to generate a patched R15x version?  If not, I'll try to
set up a build system and apply the patch locally.

-Garret


On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 9:26 AM, Patrik Nyblom <pan@REDACTED> wrote:

>  Hi again!
>
> I think I've found it. At least I've found one error, hopefully that's the
> one you've also found :)
>
> The sys_gethrtime function has gon new uses in R15 and on, uses where it
> is no longer protected by the  erts_timeofday_mtx. So - it simply needs a
> lock of it's own. This gives a slight performance loss, but that could be
> fixed by using GetTickCount64 on win7 and win2008 at least.
>
> Can you try a version of beam.smp.dll with a lock and see if the error is
> gone on your machines? If that works, I would also like you to try an
> optimized version, but let's first make sure we have the bug nailed down :)
>
> In my dropbox, there's a beam.smp.dll. If you replace
> $ERL_ROOT/erts-5.10.1/bin/beam.smp.dll with that one and then start werl,
> the slogan should contain [source-be0da3e]. It is for 64bit windows. The
> public dropbox URL is:
> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17212223/beam.smp.dll
>
> This should work without any special messages or such, giving a working
> erlang:now/0. If it starts sending strange ERROR REPORT's about ticks
> moving slightly backwards, we have a more complicated bug, but I haven't
> seen any such messages since i added proper locking.
>
> If it's possible for you to test this, I would be immensely grateful!
>
> Cheers,
> /Patrik
>
> On 03/07/2013 04:37 PM, Patrik Nyblom wrote:
>
> Hi Garret!
>
> I've been able to reproduce it on my freshly installed Win2008 machine!
> Great, now I only need to debug it and find the error :)
>
> I'll get back to you as soon as I feel I have a fix - it might take a few
> days, given the relatively long turn around time, but we'll get there!
>
> Thank you for all the help and information!
>
> Cheers,
> /Patrik
>
> On 03/05/2013 09:10 PM, Garret Smith wrote:
>
>  On the same machine with the same steps as previous, I reproduced the
> time jump on R16B.
> This time the jump happened with a <5 sec delta btw now() and
> os:timestamp().
> Still jumping ~2126000 seconds.
>
>  -Garret
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 11:20 AM, Garret Smith <garret.smith@REDACTED>wrote:
>
>>   The gist https://gist.github.com/garret-smith/5087169 is updated with
>> a slightly better version.  I was able to reproduce the jump in less than
>> an hour.  I also did some more things to perturb the timing code while the
>> test program was running.
>>
>>  Here is the latest info, everything I can think of that may have the
>> slightest effect:
>>   * R15B01 64-bit build
>>   * Pacific time zone (GMT -8)
>>   * Xeon E5405 in an HP DL160
>>   * no arguments to erl.exe
>>   * bursty, high CPU load, >75% memory used by other software
>>   * running Observer on the test VM displaying the "Load Charts" tab
>>   * made some small adjustments (~ 60 seconds) to the system clock while
>> running the tests - now() and os:timestamp() behaved as expected, initially
>> showing a delta and slowly converging
>>   * w32tm /resync to fix the system clock some time after perturbing it
>>
>>  The time jump in now() occurred when now() was ~9 seconds behind
>> os:timestamp() as reported by the new test program.
>>
>>  I'm starting to look at R16B now.
>>
>>  -Garret Smith
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 8:37 AM, Garret Smith <garret.smith@REDACTED>wrote:
>>
>>>   I haven't seen anything unexpected in os:timestamp().  No jumps at
>>> all.
>>>
>>>  CPU is an Intel Xeon X3430.
>>>
>>> I have reproduced it in the LosAngeles/Pacific Time (GMT -8) and US East
>>> coast time zone (GMT -5).
>>>
>>>  I have not yet tried R16B.  I'll be starting that today.  I'm also
>>> trying to improve the test program, since it's taking quite a long time
>>> between jumps for me as well.  I'll let you know as soon as I have a better
>>> one.
>>>
>>>  You have no idea how relieved I am that you are looking into this!
>>>
>>>  Thanks,
>>>  Garret Smith
>>>
>>>
>>>  On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 3:06 AM, Patrik Nyblom <pan@REDACTED> wrote:
>>>
>>>>  Hi again...
>>>>
>>>> I'm not sure about one thing. What happens to os:timestamp() during
>>>> these jumps? Does it stay on track or does it also jump around?
>>>>
>>>> I've tried to reproduce it with your program, but has not yet
>>>> succeeded. Have you seen this on the R16B release as well?
>>>>
>>>> Is the hardware in any way fancy (like a lot of cores, some new
>>>> processor I don't have or something else?) or is there anything else
>>>> special about the machine? Also the time zone you're running in would be
>>>> interesting, as there is some time zone specific code there...
>>>>
>>>> I would really like to be able to reproduce it so you don't have to do
>>>> all the tests at your site, it might end up being really time consuming for
>>>> you if I make to many mistakes :)
>>>>
>>>> Cheers,
>>>> /Patrik
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 03/05/2013 08:50 AM, Patrik Nyblom wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hi!
>>>>
>>>> On 03/05/2013 02:26 AM, Garret Smith wrote:
>>>>
>>>>     I have been beating my head against a wall for weeks tracking down
>>>> spooky behaviour[sic] in one of our production systems.  I finally tracked
>>>> it down to "jumps" in the times returned by erlang:now(), causing all
>>>> timers in the system to expire at once.  I have witnessed this bug on
>>>> R15B01, both 64 and 32-bit versions running on Windows Server 2008 R2, both
>>>> on bare metal and VirtualBox VM.
>>>>
>>>>  The time jump is always around 2126000 seconds, or a little over 24
>>>> days.  The now() time does not try to converge with os:timestamp() as the
>>>> documentation suggests, and as I confirmed it does if you just change the
>>>> system clock.
>>>>
>>>>  Another VM running concurrently on the same machine but with little
>>>> load (diagnostic node & production node) did not time jump.
>>>>
>>>>  Higher load seems to make the time jumps happen more often.
>>>>
>>>>  Frequency between time jumps varies between seconds and hours, but
>>>> when a jump occurs, it is always 2126000 + (9 to 26) seconds.
>>>>
>>>>  I never see the jump in logfile timestamps that use os:timestamp() for
>>>> tagging log messages.  I had to start tracing a production node before I
>>>> caught the jump.  Here are some lines from a trace, where the timestamp in
>>>> trace_ts is printed using calendar:now_to_local_time() and then in raw
>>>> tuple format:
>>>>
>>>> 2013-4-16 21:40:1.993399|{1366,173601,993399}
>>>> 2013-4-16 21:40:1.993400|{1366,173601,993400}
>>>> 2013-5-11 12:13:41.986961|{1368,299621,986961}
>>>> 2013-5-11 12:13:41.986962|{1368,299621,986962}
>>>>
>>>>  then a bit later...
>>>>
>>>> 2013-5-11 12:36:19.955129|{1368,300979,955129}
>>>> 2013-5-11 12:36:19.955130|{1368,300979,955130}
>>>> 2013-6-5 3:9:49.538830|{1370,426989,538830}
>>>> 2013-6-5 3:9:49.538833|{1370,426989,538833}
>>>>
>>>>   Gah! That's obviously not supposed to happen...
>>>>
>>>>  I captured many such jumps over the course of a day or so.  Obviously
>>>> from the dates, 2 jumps happened before I started tracing.
>>>>
>>>>  I was able to reproduce the bug, though not as efficiently as my
>>>> production system, with the following sample program:
>>>> https://gist.github.com/garret-smith/5087169
>>>>
>>>> It took over an hour of runtime before the first time jump.  I am
>>>> working on a better way to reproduce it at the moment, but it's hard to
>>>> test the test with a bug so intermittent.
>>>>
>>>>  I am also testing various other VM versions.  My first hope was that
>>>> this was limited to the 64-bit version where we first encountered the
>>>> problem, but a change to the 32-bit version has only made the problem
>>>> happen less often, not eliminated it.
>>>>
>>>>  We never saw this bug with R14B03 which we were running previously to
>>>> R15B01.  However, system load is different so I can't make a direct
>>>> comparison.  I did notice a few significant updates to the Windows time
>>>> related code between R14B03 and R15:
>>>>
>>>>  git log sys_time.c
>>>>
>>>>  commit 46eb4359b05b220861453a869dc734480ec045a6
>>>> Author: Patrik Nyblom <pan@REDACTED>
>>>> Date:   Tue Dec 6 19:07:16 2011 +0100
>>>>
>>>>     Emulate localtime, gmtime and mktime to enable negative time_t
>>>>
>>>> commit 913f05af100e98a8665bbb6168e89fbcfe4ece75
>>>> Author: Bj<C3><B6>rn-Egil Dahlberg <egil@REDACTED>
>>>> Date:   Fri Dec 2 15:25:06 2011 +0100
>>>>
>>>>     Teach windows sys_localtime_r
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>   Yep, that's me... But even if I gave a totally weird time back from
>>>> those, the erlang:now logic should have stopped this from happening. I'll
>>>> try to reproduce using your example program. If nothing else helps, I'll
>>>> instrument a VM that gives som traces in the time code...
>>>>
>>>>  I am completely stumped.  What can I do next to help track down the
>>>> source of the bug?
>>>>
>>>>   Unfortunately, so am I. Especially weird that it's load related...
>>>> Maybe something is not locked as it should be...
>>>>
>>>>  Thanks,
>>>>  Garret Smith
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for reporting, I'll get back to you!
>>>>
>>>> Cheers,
>>>> /Patrik
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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>>
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