k, causing a corrective amount (compensating for the increase in the multiplier being multiplied against the unaccumulated offset value) to be subtracted from xtime_nsec. This can cause xtime_nsec to underflow. Unfortunately, since we notify the NTP subsystem via second_overflow() whenever we accumulate a full second, and this effects the error accumulation that has already occured, we cannot simply revert the accumulated second from xtime nor move the second accumulation to after the clocksource_adjust call without a change in behavior. This leaves us with (at least) two options: 1) Simply return from clocksource_adjust() without making a change if we notice the adjustment would cause xtime_nsec to go negative. This would work, but I'm concerned that if a large adjustment was needed (due to the error being large), it may be possible to get stuck with an ever increasing error that becomes too large to correct (since it may always force xtime_nsec negative). This may just be paranoia on my part. 2) Catch xtime_nsec if it is negative, then add back the amount its negative to both xtime_nsec and the error. This second method is consistent with how we've handled earlier rounding issues, and also has the benefit that the error being added is always in the oposite direction also always equal or smaller then the correction being applied. So the risk of a corner case where things get out of control is lessened. This patch fixes bug 11970, as tested by Yanmin Zhang http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11970 Reported-by: alex.shi@intel.com Signed-off-by: John Stultz Acked-by: "Zhang, Yanmin" Tested-by: "Zhang, Yanmin" Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar „[ߦ•(x