05-05-2017 11:41 AM
I got a report of an anomaly on a production application. It occurred yesterday. A few UUTs apparently "skipped ahead" by several hours of testing inexplicably. My software records unit test results every 4 seconds, so I have pretty good visibility of such errors. Here is a screenshot:
Notice columns 2-3. These are produced by calls to DateStr() and TimeStr(). Several columns over, you'll see a test time string also in HH:MM:SS format. This value is calculated by calling GetCurrentDateTime().
You'll notice that between the Date/TimeStr columns and my elapsed column, they agree that some sort of time warp happened, to the tune of 27 hours!
I checked the PC's real time clock. It was correct to within a few minutes, correct date, correct AM/PM.
This codebase has been released and stable for a few years now, so I wouldn't expect issues around the use of this part of my logging mechanism. This is the first time I've ever witnessed an error quite like this where I couldn't depend on CVI's date/time functions.
Should I be worried?
05-09-2017 02:08 AM
Are you absolutely sure nothing happened outside your application, such as a clock correction via NTP, or similar?
05-09-2017 07:39 AM
No, I'm not completely sure. Although our production floor keeps these computers disconnected from the internet for that reason.
I starting to think that this PC "hung up" for several hours and recovered.
05-09-2017 11:23 AM
Have you looked for hints of any strange behaviour in Windows' Event logs ?
05-11-2017 03:43 PM
I did. No errors or warnings in that time frame. I'm going to swap out computers next.