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CLOCKCTL(4)                  Device Drivers Manual                 CLOCKCTL(4)

NAME
     clockctl - Clock subsystem user control

SYNOPSIS
     pseudo-device clockctl

DESCRIPTION
     The clockctl interface brings clock control to non-root users.  Any user
     with write access to /dev/clockctl will be able to perform operations
     such as settimeofday(2), clock_settime(2), adjtime(2), or ntp_adjtime(2),
     which are normally restricted to the super-user.  Using the clockctl
     pseudo-device, it is possible to run daemons such as ntpd(8) as non-
     privileged users, thus reducing the security exposure if a compromise is
     found in such a daemon.

     The clockctl pseudo-device driver provides an ioctl(2) call for each
     privileged clock-related system call.  The system call stubs in C library
     will use the ioctl(2) on /dev/clockctl if the special file is present and
     accessible, or will revert to the plain super-user-restricted system call
     if the special file is not accessible.

     The following ioctl(2) calls are defined in <sys/clockctl.h>:

     CLOCKCTL_SETTIMEOFDAY
               This will run the settimeofday(2) system call.  Argument should
               be a pointer to a struct clockctl_settimeofday:

               struct clockctl_settimeofday {
                       const struct timeval *tv;
                       const void *tzp;
               };

     CLOCKCTL_CLOCK_SETTIME
               This will run the clock_settime(2) system call.  Argument
               should be a pointer to a struct clockctl_clock_settime:

               struct clockctl_clock_settime {
                       clockid_t clock_id;
                       struct timespec *tp;
               };

     CLOCKCTL_ADJTIME
               This will run the adjtime(2) system call.  Argument should be a
               pointer to a struct clockctl_adjtime:

               struct clockctl_adjtime {
                       const struct timeval *delta;
                       struct timeval *olddelta;
               };

     CLOCKCTL_NTP_ADJTIME
               This will run the ntp_adjtime(2) system call.  Argument should
               be a pointer to a struct clockctl_ntp_adjtime:

               struct clockctl_ntp_adjtime {
                       struct timex *tp;
               };

SEE ALSO
     adjtime(2), clock_settime(2), ioctl(2), settimeofday(2)

HISTORY
     clockctl appeared in NetBSD 1.6.

NetBSD 10.99                   February 19, 2009                  NetBSD 10.99