Background
I want to observe a running Linux system over several days for testing verification. It's a gentoo build and with custom software on top. The custom software requires various services and scripts that are datetime driven (i.e. "once a week, run ..."). I need to verify the scheduled work is performing in a harmonious manner. For testing purity, I want to avoid adjusting the pre-existing schedules (i.e. not just tweak the schedules so everything occurs more often).
The system has no important or time critical interactions with systems outside of itself.
Problem
Waiting for the system to step through daily and weekly activity is a long wait time. Modifying all clock-based timers on the system would be time consuming. Yet, I often want to test a system's end-to-end scheduled activities without waiting a week, and without manually changing the schedule periodicity to be shorter.
Potential Solution
Have the Linux system under test appear to run through it's daily cycle of activity within just a few hours.
Is there a way to cause the system's time to run faster than real world time?
My first thought is manipulating the ntp
daemon to repeatedly and smoothly increment the clock . Any other ideas?