     NAME
	  tickadj - fiddle time-related	variables in the kernel

     SYNOPSIS
	  tickadj [ -Aqs ] [ -a	new_tickadj ] [	-t new_tick ]

     DESCRIPTION
	  The tickadj program reads, and optionally modifies, several
	  time-keeping-related variables in the	running	kernel,	via
	  /dev/kmem.  The particular variables it is concerned with
	  are tick, which is the number	of microseconds	added to the
	  system time during a clock interrupt,	tickadj, which sets
	  the slew rate	and resolution used by the adjtime(2) system
	  call,	and dosynctodr,	which indicates	to the kernels on some
	  machines whether they	should internally adjust the system
	  clock	to keep	it in line with	with time-of-day clock or not.

	  By default, with no arguments, tickadj reads the variables
	  of interest in the kernel and	prints them.  At the same time
	  it determines	an "optimal" value for the value of the
	  tickadj variable if the intent is to run the xntpd(8)
	  Network Time Protocol	daemon,	and prints this	as well.
	  Since	the operation of tickadj when reading the kernel
	  mimics the operation of similar parts	of the xntpd(8)
	  program fairly closely, this is useful for doing debugging
	  of problems with xntpd(8).

	  Various flags	may be specified to change the variables of
	  interest in the running kernel.  The -a flag allows one to
	  set the the variable tickadj to the value specified as an
	  argument.  The -A flag will also cause tickadj to be
	  modified, but	instead	will set it to the internally computed
	  "optimal" value.  The	-t flag	may be used to reset the
	  kernel's value of tick, a capability which is	useful on
	  machines with	very broken clocks.  The -s flag tells the
	  program to set the value of the variable dosynctodr to zero,
	  a prerequisite for running the xntpd(8) daemon under SunOS
	  4.0.	Normally tickadj is quite verbose about	what it	is
	  doing.  The -q flag tells it to shut up about	everything
	  except errors.

	  Note that tickadj should be run with some caution when being
	  used for the first time on different types of	machines.  The
	  operations which tickadj trys	to perform are not guaranteed
	  to work on all Unix machines.

     FILES
	  /vmunix
	  /unix
	  /dev/kmem

     SEE ALSO

	  xntpd(8)

     HISTORY
	  Written by Dennis Ferguson at	the University of Toronto

     BUGS
	  Fiddling with	kernel variables at run	time as	a part of
	  ordinary operations is a hideous practice which is only
	  necessary to make up for deficiencies	in the implementation
	  of adjtime(8)	in many	kernels	and/or brokenness of the
	  system clock in some vendors'	kernels.  It would be much
	  better if the	kernels	were fixed and the tickadj program
	  went away.