"ps -ef" displays processes running prior to last reboot

[Matti_Kurkela · Accepted solution]

> We utilize ntp to maintain date/time synchronization

If you've specified a NTP server in /etc/rc.config.d/netdaemons using the NTPDATE_SERVER variable, the xntpd startup script runs "ntpdate <server>" before starting xntpd, which may shift the clock a large amount.

It might be that the system started with an incorrect "March 26" date, and got automatically corrected to September as the start-up scripts executed. This would leave the start-up timestamps of any processes that were started before xntpd to "March 26" values, while everything started after that would have a valid timestamp. The processes you listed all have a very low PID value and a PPID of zero, which normally means they're kernel processes. Typically they would all have started very early in the boot process.