[GLLUG] Strange clock behavior

James Courtier-Dutton james.dutton at gmail.com
Sun Dec 30 15:20:53 UTC 2018


On Sun, 30 Dec 2018 at 12:52, Chris Bell via GLLUG <gllug at mailman.lug.org.uk>
wrote:

> Hello,
> I have a computer running fully updated KDE on Debian Stretch 24/7 with
> top
> showing over 99% idle yet the onscreen clock is stopping at random for
> minutes
> at a time, with seconds sometimes jumping backwards and forwards. Is
> anyone
> else seeing this, or can anyone suggest the cause, (perhaps a failing BIOS
> battery)?
>
> Hi,

This is not going to be a BIOS battery problem.
The BIOS clock is read once at boot time, and then internal CPU timing is
used after that.
One way to check this is to type "date" at the command line, and see if
that jumps forwards and backwards.
My guess is that this is a bug in the onscreen clock program, and not
anything wrong with the OS time keeping.

Also, if the OS time keeping was bad, you would see timestamps in the logs
jumping backwards and forwards also.

I don't use KDE, so cannot comment on any specific bugs in it, but I am a
Linux kernel developer and have written video player (xine) for Linux, so
understand well how the various clock sources work in Linux.

Kind Regards

James
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