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System time was set externally in the past.

Former Member
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Hi Gurus,

In our production system,several warning messages have come up System time was set externally in the past. Wait 1 second(s).

But when i checked the system time it showing the same as OS's.

Could you please throw some information around this and how these warnings can be avoided?

Thanks

Sabya

BASIS ENTHUSIAST

Accepted Solutions (0)

Answers (5)

Answers (5)

Akshay_G
Contributor
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Hi Sabyasachi,

What's your OS Version?

Is your SAP application hosted on Windows Server.

Please check-out SAP Note-447839.

Also to brief you about this common issue where in sometimes the OS time is reset back in the past and the SAP application observes this an warning and in severe situations as an ABAP dump.

On windows server, if the automatic synchronization of timezone is enabled it synchronizes to a master time server. Actually this should be fine, but in case of Windows server, what happens is that every time the synchronization happens from a master time server, the SAP server gets a hard reset i.e. Sudden decrease of time at the time of synchronization like from 11:45 AM to 10:45 AM. This kind of behavior affects the applications running on the server. This should have been soft reset i.e. 11:45 AM time should go back in time in fractions over the entire week (Soft Reset) until it is synced in real time. SAP applications running on windows server implemented with Hard reset of Time are absolutely not supported and in that case the hard reset must be refrained at all costs. Refer SAP Note 447839 for further details.

To narrow down the root cause of OS time shifts you can run a watchdog tool SAP time trace tool which logs the OS time every 5secs, so the next time whenever this occurs in the system it can be investigated what happened to the OS time at that instance.

If the described case matches with your scenario, you can disable the Automatic time synchronization feature on the windows server.

Regards,

Akshay

Former Member
0 Kudos

Hi Akshaya

We run on an AIX box,Could you please let me know about the SAP time trace tool, from where to get it and how to use it?

Thanks

Sabya

Sriram2009
Active Contributor
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Former Member
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Hi Sri,

I ran the report TZCUSTHELP and UTC timer seems to be OK.

Thanks

Sabya

Sriram2009
Active Contributor
0 Kudos

Hi Sabya

1.  Could you check this IBM link OS level time zone

IBM Managing the Time Zone Variable (POSIX) - United States

2. Kindly refer the SAP Notes

989963 - Linux: VMware timing problem

938345 - Syslog error: System time was set externally in the past

3.What is the version SAP system & kernel level?

BR

SS

farkathulla_cikkanther
Active Participant
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Hello

Former Member
0 Kudos

HI Farkath,

System time zone is GMT OK.

Thanks

Sabya

Former Member
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Hi ,

Please see below thread.

https://scn.sap.com/thread/929434

Regrads

Santosh

Former Member
0 Kudos

HI,

check the abap dumps, system log, and time zone for both SAP and OS. also read the note 198411

. Asad