Time Almost Freezes

Gushy · Posted: Wed Jul 28, 2004 9:25 am Post subject: Time Almost Freezes

I've found a problem happening on both a gentoo server I have and a couple of whitebox servers I run. It happened on the gentoo first and I noticed it while doing an emerge -auv system so I assumed it was something I'd setup something wrong in a config file.

Basically the clock is slowing right down so much that the clock changing 1 second is taking nearly a minute. If I try to run top nothing happens, so I assume the CPUs are being used insanely.

I forgot to check hwclock before rebooting, but as the clock is ok after reboot (it was about 4 days out before reboot) so I assume it's ok.

Anybody have a clue as to what might be causing this? And where I could look to find clues? I'm guessing it's program not playing nice with the hardware. For reference these boxes are HP TC4100 servers. Dual P3, SCSI, etc. I can provide more hardware details if needed.
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Gushy

diastelo · Guru Joined: 23 Feb 2004 Posts: 521

Do you have rtc (real time clock) compiled into the kernel?

This sounds like it's a hardware problem. If you boot into the bios, you should see the clock. Does the clock increment normally there? Is the battery for the bios still good?
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"No question is so difficult to answer as that to which the answer is obvious" -- George Bernard Shaw

Lunchy · Posted: Thu Jul 29, 2004 9:07 pm Post subject:

You're not moving near the speed of light relative to the server are you?

(sorry, couldn't resist some geek humor

)
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-Lunchy

Gushy · Posted: Fri Jul 30, 2004 7:34 am Post subject:

lol, not near the speed of light no.

BIOS battery is fine and clock is fine, I think it's a software problem not a hardware problem; happening on too many boxes that are the same age and identical, although identical boxes that run windows have no problems. And though they are only P3 xeons, the boxes aren't that old, less than 1 year old.

Given that windows has no probs, and that the box really struggles, top doesn't even run, I reckon it's a software thing.

A reboot and all is fine, although I have to hard reset the box as reboot/init 6 says it's changing init level but doesn't actually do anything.

Not sure if I have RTC compiled in, I'll have to look. I did a genkernel on these boxes, the only stuff I manually specified is the kernel options for the scsi cards.
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Gushy

Gushy · Posted: Sat Sep 04, 2004 6:53 pm Post subject:

well I haven't solved the problem (a bios update didn't fix it), but it seems I miss diagnosed the problem.

Time is not standing still, it's looping in about a 4-5 second loop. As before hwclock reports correctly.
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Gushy

Gushy · Posted: Fri Oct 01, 2004 11:17 am Post subject:

grr still not solved the problem. As a last ditch attempt I replaced the system batteries, but that didn't help.

Anyone got any ideas on this?
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Gushy