Slow response from Apache, no dynamic changes via environment variable

[Krzysiaczek]

Hi

I've installed faketime library using apt-get install faketime to test web application. It works but I've got two problems

• almost every apache response is delayed by 5 seconds
  • must be some timeout but not sure where to dig?
  • not sure if this has anything to do with it, but I was expecting the clock to shifted only and working as usual - change every second, but instead it remains totally frozen - is it the expected situation?
• I can initiate FAKETIME value through the environment variable but later changes to environment variable are not reflected in modified time
  • is there anyway to achieve such dynamic change of time without need of restarting the server?
  • because I'm running this on Docker container I need to modify config file /etc/apache2/envvars and effectively execute docker-compose down and docker-compose up again as even simple restart command for web server/container is not effective.

My config is added to the end of /etc/apache2/envvars

export LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/faketime/libfaketime.so.1
export FAKETIME="2018-12-24 12:41:15"

Or via env variable

export FAKETIME=$FAKETIME

from .env file

FAKETIME="2018-12-24 12:41:15"

through environment option in docker-compose.yml

   environment:
      FAKETIME: ${FAKETIME}

[wolfcw]

Please try to solve this outside of Docker and a web application first by getting familiar with libfaketime's relevant settings in a simpler environment.

You're freezing the time with absolute timestamps, but probably want to use 'start at' dates or offsets/relative dates. Modifying the FAKETIME setting at run-time should work fine. If it's complicated to change an already running process' environment variables, text files and file timestamps can be used for the same purpose. Eventually libfaketime's caching should be disabled.

[Krzysiaczek]

Thanks for the advise. It looks like the 5 sec timeout delay was related to frozen/static clock, adding @ at the beginning of time definition has fixed the problem for me. FAKETIME="@2018-12-24 12:41:15" works as expected.