Re: EPICS startup script st.cmd on vxWorks warning message

[Andrew Johnson via Tech-talk <tech-talk at aps.anl.gov>]

Hi,

On 11/23/22 2:40 AM, whitetiger1123 via Tech-talk wrote:

Hello all,
While running EPICS startup script st.cmd on vxWorks for an app that was made successfully, I am getting following error:
 
[VxWorks Boot]: @
boot device          : geisc
unit number          : 0
processor number     : 0
host name            : host
file name            : /home/test/work2/vxconf/default/vxWorks
inet on ethernet (e) : 10.4.49.69:ffffff00
host inet (h)        : 10.4.49.170
gateway inet (g)     : 10.4.49.99
user (u)             : test
ftp password (pw)    : test
flags (f)            : 0x0
startup script (s)   : host:/home/test/epics/synApps_6_1/support/motor-R7-1/modules/motorOms/iocs/omsIOC/iocBoot/iocOms/st.cmd
 
Loading... 2457184
Starting at 0x100000...

Snipped ...

iocInit
Starting iocInit
############################################################################
## EPICS R3.15.6
## EPICS Base built Oct  7 2022
############################################################################
WARNING: OS Clock time was read before being set.
Using 1990-01-02 00:00:00.000000 UTC
iocInit: Time provider has not yet synchronized.
iocRun: All initialization complete
value = 0 = 0x0

The IOC appears to have started normally so it should work. The only issue will be that it wasn't able to set its time-of-day clock, so the timestamps that accompany any data over Channel Access will be dated from January 1990. Unless you explicitly configure it the VxWorks clock code in EPICS will try to synchronize the OS clock time with an NTP server running on the boot host. If your boot host doesn't run an NTP server such as ntpd or chrony (or the server isn't configured to make the time available over the network) you can give the IOC the IP address for another NTP server like this, replacing xx with the appropriate number for that server:

putenv "EPICS_TS_NTP_INET=10.4.49.xx"

That line should be added near the top of your st.cmd script, preferably before the line that loads the oms.munch file. Alternatively you could install an NTP server on your boot host and make sure that it can be access through any firewall that is running there, then you won't need the line above.

There are a few commands that you can run to look at the state of the EPICS time synchronization system: generalTimeReport(1) will list the time providers that have been registered with it and what their current state is. NTPTime_Report(1) will give more information about the NTP time synchronization task, and ClockTime_Report(1) tells you about the task that synchronizes the OS clock — both of those should also appear in the generalTimeReport output but with different information. You can omit the (1) parameters to those commands which will then show less detail.

HTH,

- Andrew

-- 
Complexity comes for free, Simplicity you have to work for.