# Courtesy of Armin Ronacher, found at StackOverflow import ctypes import os CLOCK_MONOTONIC = 1 # see class timespec(ctypes.Structure): _fields_ = [ ('tv_sec', ctypes.c_long), ('tv_nsec', ctypes.c_long) ] librt = ctypes.CDLL('librt.so.1', use_errno=True) clock_gettime = librt.clock_gettime clock_gettime.argtypes = [ctypes.c_int, ctypes.POINTER(timespec)] def now(): t = timespec() if clock_gettime(CLOCK_MONOTONIC, ctypes.pointer(t)) != 0: errno_ = ctypes.get_errno() raise OSError(errno_, os.strerror(errno_)) return t.tv_sec + t.tv_nsec * 1e-9