Do you mean adjtime by any chance? Unfortunately the values in its
fields do not seem to be well defined. It is part of the initscripts
package.

{^_^}

On 2012/10/02 22:09, g wrote:
> greetings.
>
> in unix, there is a file, name of which i do not recall, used as a
> 'clock factor' and controls the 'tick rate' for the system clock.
>
> is such a file used in scientific linux and what is it's name?
>
> tia.
>