Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Hi Guobao,

 

I’ve looked into the code and I think I’ve made a horrible mistake.  Can you try the following patch and let me know if it fixes things for you:

 

diff --git a/cothread/dbr.py b/cothread/dbr.py
index 655bf49..d2acc36 100644
--- a/cothread/dbr.py
+++ b/cothread/dbr.py
@@ -150,8 +150,13 @@ class ca_float(float):
     __doc__ = ca_doc_string
 
 
-# The EPICS epoch begins 1st January 1990.
-EPICS_epoch = int(time.mktime((1990, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0)))
+# The EPICS epoch begins midnight first thing on 1st January 1990 and is in UTC.
+# We convert all EPICS timestamps to the Python epoch.  This is not defined in
+# the language documentation but in practice is the ANSI epoch, midnight 1st
+# January 1970.  Strictly we should compute
+#   EPICS_epoch = calendar.timegm((1990, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0))
+# but that pulls in an extra module dependency and the number is constant:
+EPICS_epoch = 631152000             # Seconds from 1970 to 1990
 
 
 class ca_timestamp(ctypes.Structure):
 

 

Of course, the problem is that:

 

1.       EPICS timestamps are in UTC, as they ought to be

2.       The mktime() function is localised, so I shouldn’t have used it

3.       The correct function, timegm(), is less widely known (a GNU extension to libc, for example)

4.       At Diamond our time zone is GMT which is at most one hour away from UTC

5.       I have a horrible feeling I’ve only looked closely at timestamps during the winter (when GMT=UTC)

6.       oops

 

Do you have any more bugs in the pipeline?  I’m looking hard now!

 

I’ve pushed this patch to git, but will hold off on a release for a few days yet.

 

 

From: Shen, Guobao [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: 11 February 2012 03:59
To: Abbott, Michael (DLSLtd,RAL,DIA)
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: cothread time stamp problem

 

Hi Michael,

What is the time policy used in cothread to retrieve ioc time stamp?

I am using cothread 2.3, and found the time is shifted by a constant value relative to local timezone.

For example, in US EST time, to get time stamp in Python, I use val = caget(pv, format=FORMAT_TIME).

However, the time.localtime(val.timestamp)=real local time + 5 hours, and 

time.gmtime(val.timestamp) = real local time + 10 hours = real UTC time + 5 hours,

which looks shifting to wrong direction.

 

Here is my test case:

$ caget -d 20 test
test
    Native data type: DBF_DOUBLE
    Request type:     DBR_TIME_DOUBLE
    Element count:    1
    Value:            1.9
    Timestamp:        2012-02-10 15:27:21.645387
    Status:           NO_ALARM
    Severity:         NO_ALARM

$ python
...
>>> from cothread.catools import *
>>> import time
>>> v=caget('test', format=FORMAT_TIME)
>>> time.localtime(v.timestamp)
time.struct_time(tm_year=2012, tm_mon=2, tm_mday=10, tm_hour=20, tm_min=27, tm_sec=21, tm_wday=4, tm_yday=41, tm_isdst=0)
>>> time.gmtime(v.timestamp)
time.struct_time(tm_year=2012, tm_mon=2, tm_mday=11, tm_hour=1, tm_min=27, tm_sec=21, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=42, tm_isdst=0)

Any suggestion?

Guobao

 

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-- 
Guobao Shen
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National Synchrotron Light Source II
Brookhaven National Laboratory
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