[Dovecot] dovecot: Fatal: Time just moved backwards by 3603 seconds.

[Daniel L. Miller]

Stephen Feyrer wrote:
> Daniel L. Miller wrote:
>> Stephen Feyrer wrote:
>>> <nervous_darting_eyes> Hi Everyone. </nervous_darting_eyes>
>>>
>>> Ooops I just broke my dovecot install.
>>>
>>> I've looked through the mailing list archives and not found anything 
>>> relevant.
>>>
>>>
>>> When I try to connect to my mail server I get this message.
>>> "Could not connect to mail server chen.home.org; connection was 
>>> refused"
>>>
>>>
>>> The last message in /var/log/mail.err is:-
>>>
>>> Aug 13 21:02:27 chen dovecot: Fatal: Time just moved backwards by 
>>> 3603 seconds. This might cause a lot of problems, so I'll just kill 
>>> myself now. http://wiki.dovecot.org/TimeMovedBackwards
>>>
>>>
>>> It seems this is my own fault.  Time on my system is a little wonky 
>>> so I reset the time and then I found out I'd broken Dovecot.  I 
>>> didn't realise that doing this would have an impact on dovecot.  I 
>>> read the web page and to be honest I'm not confident about hacking 
>>> source code.
>>>
>>> I've reinstalled dovecot which worked except it hasn't solved my 
>>> time travel problem.
>>>
>>> By the way since my first install of dovecot the config file seems 
>>> to have changed a little but since I've tried to migrate my settings 
>>> over the new file and been met with the same problem I don't think 
>>> it's that.
>>>
>>> Is it possible to get dovecot working again?
>> What happens when you try to start Dovecot again?  Not re-install - 
>> just start it.
>>
>
> I just did this to show you.
>
> # /etc/init.d/dovecot restart
>  * Stopping dovecot ...        [ ok ]
>  * Starting dovecot ...        [ ok ]
>
> And then this...
>
>
> And then this again...
>  # /etc/init.d/dovecot restart
>  * Stopping dovecot ...         [ ok ]
>  * Starting dovecot ...
> Warning: Last died with error (see error log for more information): 
> Time just moved backwards by 106 seconds. This might cause a lot of 
> problems, so I'll just kill myself now. 
> http://wiki.dovecot.org/TimeMovedBackwards                [ ok ]
>
> I've not seen this before in a restart.
>
> That was followed by...
> # /etc/init.d/dovecot restart
>  * Stopping dovecot ...        [ ok ]
>  * Starting dovecot ...        [ ok ]
>
>
> -- 
> Regards
>
> Stephen.
Whoa!  OK - so I'm seeing sometimes it works fine, and sometimes it 
reports this problem?  You started off with a 3306 second jump (an hour 
off) to a 106 second jump (almost two minutes).  Something is REALLY 
whacked with your clock!

Um....do you have a UPS?  If not - get one!
Are you running running an ntp server?  I'm assuming not.  It's time to 
start.

-- 
Daniel