[ale] Clock problems with two SuSE setups

[John Mills]

Jeff -

Thanks for the note.

My systems that regularly use 'ntpdate' have no problems - those are the 
ones reliably connected to the InterNet, and rarely restarted (including 
one desktop running SuSE-10.1).

On the laptops I only run my 'ntpdate' script manually from the 
command-line when I have a suitable net connection. For example, my laptop 
(reset from an NTP server) showed correct time, and agreement between 
system and hardware clocks at 12:08:xx EDT. I then rebooted the system and 
it came up with system and hardware clocks in agreement at 11:55:xx. That 
suggests the hardware clock lost about 15 minutes over whatever part of 
the reboot cycle it was unmanaged, blitzed, or whatever.

Slippage of the hardware clock on this unit was of the order of a few 
minutes per month, at worst. In fact the 'ntpdate' script is a recent 
addition I added _because_ the hardware clock had apparently become 
useless.

Further, the hardware and system clocks stay reasonably in synch after 
they are reset.

One example systems: I suspect hardware failure. Two example systems,
starting at about the same time: I suspect administrative, configuration,
or software problem. Trauma somewhere!

 - Mills


On Mon, 4 Jun 2007, Jeff Lightner wrote:

> Are you using ntp to keep your "system" time in sync with known clocks
> such as GPS devices or U.S. Naval Observatory servers tick and tock?
> 
> If so you might want to use hwclock command to update the hardware
> clocks from the system time periodically.  The only time the hwclock is
> really used is at boot up to set the initial system time at boot.   I've
> seen folks in another forum have issues and doing this seemed to resolve
> things for them.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
 ...
> Subject: [ale] Clock problems with two SuSE setups
> 
> ALErs-
> 
> I updated my SuSE-9.2, -10.1 and -10.2 systems by RPM to
> 'timezone-2.5-34.1' to adapt to our [brilliant] new daylight savings
> calendar. I don't know if it's related to the change, but I've recently
> noticed that my two laptops' system clocks are wildly off when I start
> them, and badly off (10s of minutes) even if I just reboot Linux without
> 
> cycling power.
> 
> I first suspected a hardware problem in the -9.2 machine where I first 
> noticed the problem, but with two bad actors I tend to blame some 
> installation or configuration issue. I tried running the clocks in local
> 
> time but that didn't help, so now they're back on UTC and still giving 
> trouble.
> 
> I have no reason to suppose this is specific to SuSE setups; that's just
> 
> what I have here, and the two laptops are the ones frequently restarted.
> 
> Has anyone on the list dealt with this type of problem?
> 
> TIA.
>  - Mills