[SWLUG] System clock loosing time

[steve at nexusuk.org]

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On Sun, 14 Nov 2004, Neil Jones wrote:

> Is this a cmos battery problem or something?
> Everything else seems to work fine.

The hardware clock (and cmos battery) should only affect the time whilest 
the machine is powered off - while the kernel is running the time is 
maintained by the software, and then synced back to the hardware clock on 
shutdown.

The most common cause of the clock losing time whilest the machine is 
powered on is some broken kernel module turning off interrupts for long 
periods of time (I have especially noticed this with the LIRC modules). 
You said that it's got worse - have you installed any new hardware or 
changed the kernel recently?

> Is there some way of synchonising the computer to a time source on the net?

You can use ntpd to sync with NTP time sources on the internet, Fedora 
Core 3 will set it up automagically for you on installation, or install 
and configure the ntpd package on other distributions.  However, if the 
clock is going way too wrong then ntpd will refuse to sync it since it 
will consider it too broken to be of use.

In that case, I'd suggest trying to unload as many unnecessary kernel 
modules as possible and see if the problem dissappears, then you could 
trace it back to one specific driver.

  - Steve       Jabber: steve at nexusuk.org     Web: http://www.nexusuk.org/

      Servatis a periculum, servatis a maleficum - Whisper, Evanescence

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