[Scottish] Time - The Missing Frontier (Sorry for the Star Trek Reference)

[Colin McKinnon]

On Wednesday 27 August 2003 21:44, Phil Deane wrote:
> Hello Folks
>
> I have a bit of a problem. My system is loosing time.
>
Maybe its being kdnapped by aliens?

> But the other night I left it in Linux and the next day I noticed the clock
> was out by about 8 mins. (not the first time it has been out)
>
Linux sets a software clock from the hrdware when it starts up. Some 
distributions (certainly Suse8.2) write the time back to the clock at 
shutdown. So you have a range of options to choose from. A quick fix would be 
to disable the write back at shutdown (/etc/rc.d/boot.clock on my Suse box), 
but if you really want to do it properly then read up on (man 2/8) adjtimex.

> I posted some newsgroup messages last night, and rebooted into windows, all
> seems fine, rebooted into linux this evening, to check email etc, and found
> my date was still at 27th August, but the year was 2020?!?!
>
Thats more than just slippage. If it helps, I know of a Windows box which 
occasionally jumps forward 150 years causing the applications it runs to 
crash (so I'd be interested to find out why yours is doing this).

HTH

Colin