System time wrong

[Keffin]

I noticed last night that the time on my system is wrong, 22 minutes slow in fact. I have set the time to both UTC (I live in England) and local in rc.conf but it makes no difference, and it can't be a timezone issue if it's out by 22 minutes. Anyone know how to fix this? I also tried a quick-fix by trying to just change the clock in Gnome. It tells me I don't have an app to do it with. What would I need to emerge to do that?

Thanks.
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Always cut the deck if it ups your odds.

[madtinkerer]

emerge ntpdate and read the man page. if it is consistently 22 minutes out though, there may be another problem. Sometimes if you dualboot with windows, time slipping can occur, although I'm not sure of the cause. You can use ntpdate in a cron job, so it should work well for you.

[NeddySeagoon]

Keffin,

This happens if the battery on your motherboard is dying. It provides power to the clock when you system if off.

Set the time in the BIOS net time you boot. Linux reads BISO time at start-up then keeps track of time using kernel jiffies, which can be traced back to your hardware clock.

Installing ntpdate will cause linux time to be synched to a ntp server. At shutdown linux will update the BIOS clock.

Both the CPU and BIOS clock crystals are low accuracy devices (as crystals go) so the timekeeping of the system, left to its own devices is poor to start with.
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Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[Keffin]

Even after a fresh emerge sync and ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" I get no results for ntpdate and searching emerge for "date" or "time" gave me nothing that looks too useful.
_________________
Always cut the deck if it ups your odds.

[madtinkerer]

sorry. the package is ntp the command to run it is ntpdate. I always get those confused.

[Keffin]

I posted that other reply before I read yours Neddy, it would seem you're bang on. I booted into my other linux partition and the clock was also running slow, I guess this has been happening for ages without me knowing. I booted into windows and it would seem that that set the BIOS straight for me, my time is now fine.

Should I be worried that my motherboard battery is dying? Does it do more than just take care of the clock when the system is off?

Also, a google led me to an ntpdate howto that told me that I want to use "emerge ntp" to get the ntpdate program.

Thanks a lot.
_________________
Always cut the deck if it ups your odds.

[NeddySeagoon]

Keffin,

The battery also keeps the CMOS settings alive but it usually does that when its too dead to run the clock at all. I have run PCs with no battery - you have to set the CMOS by hand at evey start up. More modern systems may use FLASH memory in place of CMOS, so it wont be an issue.

I'm somewhat suspitious of Windows getting the time right if the BIOS clock is slow. Maybe it stores an offset every time you put Windows time right ?

The right thing to do is put the BIOS time right, then pick up the pieces. You can get a free ntp for Windows, so it sounds like ntp all round, timesync on startup and ignore the battery.

If you are really curious, note all the BIOS settings, power off then remove the battery. What happens at the next power up?
Fix the BIOS settings as required.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[Keffin]

I don't fancy digging around inside a laptop, but thanks for the info . I assumed from the fact that windows fixed the time that it was running some sort of ntpdate type thing at boot-up just like this is now doing. It is windows XP Pro, maybe that's one of their "Pro" features .
_________________
Always cut the deck if it ups your odds.

[ian!]

Moved to 'Duplicate Threads' in favor of this one:
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=56121

--ian!
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"To have a successful open source project, you need to be at least somewhat successful at getting along with people." -- Daniel Robbins