[feature] Complain if local date is old

[nemesifier]

⚠️ Warning!

• Requires more definition and discussion
• Not suited for beginner contributors.
• Patches will be rejected unless consensus is reached first

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The NetJSON DeviceMonitoring object has a "local_time" property which we already collectr.

Having the date out of sync is a common source of issues, eg: failing SSL cert verification, monitoring data aimed at present time saved with past dates and hence not triggering monitoring alerts properly, etc.

We should find a way to alert network admins when this occurs.

[krishvsoni]

@nemesifier Hi! I'd like to work on this issue and be part of the discussion to reach consensus.
Can you assign it to me?

[nemesifier]

@nemesifier Hi! I'd like to work on this issue and be part of the discussion to reach consensus. Can you assign it to me?

I haven't seen you contributing nor participating in any other development activity. Please pick other issues, please read our contrbuting guidelines, it links to a Github board which list issues that are suited for beginner contributors, this is not one of those, I don't feel comfortable having contributors who are inexperienced with OpenWISP touching critical code: it has never been a good idea, this statement comes from my experience fixing mess created by other beginner contributors over the years.

[pushpitkamboj]

I have gone through the issue and found the way to solve it, but want to discuss what solution is ideal ?
We can detect if the device clock is out of sync or not by having an abs diff between device and server time within specific time period (say 5min or 1hr whatever suits taking network delay in consideration)

When the device clock is out of sync, we have two main options:

• Reject the data and alert the admin.
• Accept the data, but flag it as suspicious and alert the admin.

[nemesifier]

I have gone through the issue and found the way to solve it, but want to discuss what solution is ideal ? We can detect if the device clock is out of sync or not by having an abs diff between device and server time within specific time period (say 5min or 1hr whatever suits taking network delay in consideration)

When the device clock is out of sync, we have two main options:

• Reject the data and alert the admin.
• Accept the data, but flag it as suspicious and alert the admin.

Definitely not reject the data as we need it for monitoring purposes.

Is the alert the admin part that needs to be defined. How to implement that in the leanest way that is still consistent with this module? Are you sure you want to work on this kind of thing even though you haven't contributed to other issues of this module that are easier to implement? I'd get familiar with this module before attempting to work on something like this.

[pushpitkamboj]

Okay, I will get hands on with other issues in this repo and later come to implementing this.
Hope that works?

[nemesifier]

@pushpitkamboj sounds good! 👍 I recommend filteing issues labeled with good-first-issue.