From: Wake Liu <wakel@google.com>
To: Alexandre Belloni <alexandre.belloni@bootlin.com>,
Shuah Khan <shuah@kernel.org>
Cc: linux-rtc@vger.kernel.org, linux-kselftest@vger.kernel.org,
linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Wake Liu <wakel@google.com>
Subject: [PATCH] selftests: rtc: fix flaky date_read_loop test
Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2026 20:03:13 +0800 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20260430120313.4078185-1-wakel@google.com> (raw)
The test case rtc.date_read_loop in rtctest.c fails intermittently because
it checks that the RTC time does not advance by more than 1 second per loop
iteration. However, the loop sleeps for 11ms via nanosleep(), and if the
test thread is descheduled by the OS scheduler (e.g., under heavy system
load in a VM), more than 1 second can elapse between consecutive RTC reads.
This causes the next RTC time read to be 2 or more seconds ahead of the
previous read, triggering a test assertion failure.
To make the test more resilient against OS scheduling delays, measure the
real elapsed time between iterations using a monotonic clock
(clock_gettime(CLOCK_MONOTONIC)), and compute the actual number of seconds
elapsed (delta_s) between consecutive RTC reads. Then dynamically adjust
the assertion to:
ASSERT_GE(prev_rtc_read + delta_s + 1, rtc_read);
Signed-off-by: Wake Liu <wakel@google.com>
---
tools/testing/selftests/rtc/rtctest.c | 11 +++++++++--
1 file changed, 9 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
diff --git a/tools/testing/selftests/rtc/rtctest.c b/tools/testing/selftests/rtc/rtctest.c
index 8047d9879039..54eb5c255a45 100644
--- a/tools/testing/selftests/rtc/rtctest.c
+++ b/tools/testing/selftests/rtc/rtctest.c
@@ -116,6 +116,7 @@ TEST_F_TIMEOUT(rtc, date_read_loop, READ_LOOP_DURATION_SEC + 2) {
long iter_count = 0;
struct rtc_time rtc_tm;
time_t start_rtc_read, prev_rtc_read;
+ struct timespec prev_mono, cur_mono;
if (self->fd == -1 && errno == ENOENT)
SKIP(return, "Skipping test since %s does not exist", rtc_file);
@@ -126,25 +127,31 @@ TEST_F_TIMEOUT(rtc, date_read_loop, READ_LOOP_DURATION_SEC + 2) {
rc = ioctl(self->fd, RTC_RD_TIME, &rtc_tm);
ASSERT_NE(-1, rc);
+ clock_gettime(CLOCK_MONOTONIC, &prev_mono);
start_rtc_read = rtc_time_to_timestamp(&rtc_tm);
prev_rtc_read = start_rtc_read;
do {
time_t rtc_read;
+ time_t delta_s = 0;
rc = ioctl(self->fd, RTC_RD_TIME, &rtc_tm);
ASSERT_NE(-1, rc);
+ clock_gettime(CLOCK_MONOTONIC, &cur_mono);
rtc_read = rtc_time_to_timestamp(&rtc_tm);
+ delta_s = cur_mono.tv_sec - prev_mono.tv_sec;
+
/* Time should not go backwards */
ASSERT_LE(prev_rtc_read, rtc_read);
- /* Time should not increase more then 1s at a time */
- ASSERT_GE(prev_rtc_read + 1, rtc_read);
+ /* Time should not increase more then elapsed time + 1s */
+ ASSERT_GE(prev_rtc_read + delta_s + 1, rtc_read);
/* Sleep 11ms to avoid killing / overheating the RTC */
nanosleep_with_retries(READ_LOOP_SLEEP_MS * 1000000);
prev_rtc_read = rtc_read;
+ prev_mono = cur_mono;
iter_count++;
} while (prev_rtc_read <= start_rtc_read + READ_LOOP_DURATION_SEC);
--
2.54.0.545.g6539524ca2-goog
reply other threads:[~2026-04-30 12:03 UTC|newest]
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