What is a monotonic timer?
What is a monotonic timer?
A timer that starts at a specific event, such as a system boot or activation of service, and not based on actual time.
Monotonic timers are timers that do not rely on the system clock, but at an arbitrary point. Such a point is typically an event, like a service becoming active, or the operating system completed the boot process. The timer can not move backwards, as it only gets triggered upon some system actions. The system clock therefore has no impact on the timer itself.
On Linux we see monotonic timers being used in systemd. For example, a timer could be configured with the OnBootSec setting.
Learn more about systemd timers on Linux and how to configure them.
