#414104 [ps] process start times fluctuate

Package:
procps
Source:
procps
Description:
/proc file system utilities
Submitter:
Michael Loftis
Date:
2025-04-15 10:09:01 UTC
Severity:
normal
Tags:
#414104#5
Date:
2007-03-09 06:42:50 UTC
From:
To:
Bug may actually apply to the kernel package rather than the procps
package.  Output included below shows the problem.  date shows the
correct system time, however, "ps" appears to have been launched several
minutes in the future.  The whole command sequence completes
immediately.  Problem observed on many different sarge machines running
2.6 kernel.  Could be a kernel issue reporting the wrong time somewhere
in /proc but I'm not exactly sure how to capture that. stat /proc/PID
shows the right ctime for the inode...i'm not actually sure where ps
gets the START information from.

root@sentinel:~# date;ps u
Thu Mar  8 23:31:43 MST 2007
USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
........
root      4800  0.0  0.1   2476  1424 pts/2    Ss   23:35   0:00 -bash
root      5613  0.0  0.0   1956   744 pts/2    R+   23:35   0:00 ps u
#414104#10
Date:
2007-03-09 07:35:41 UTC
From:
To:
merge 408879 408879
thanks
AKA bug #408879
#414104#27
Date:
2025-04-15 07:53:54 UTC
From:
To:
Hi,
  This is a really old bug about ps start times.
There has been a lot of changes with hardware, kernels
and procps itself so I'm closing this bug.

If it does still occur on current systems, we can
reopen it or open another, but I'd say its fixed
due to the update of those three things.

 - Craig