Hello my problem is not exactly a linux one but is certainly a hardware one. It is that every time I turn up the computer its motherboard bios clock indicates the wrong time and I have to set time manually. My mb is an old socket A (athlon 2400) mb which otherwise seems to be ok. I changed the small battery. (I know it could be the battery issue) All the same the time is wrong on startup. When computer is up it remains ok. Why it can be so? Thank you

On 2007-10-20, =SERGE= <serge_mtu@mtu-net.ru> wrote: > Hello > my problem is not exactly a linux one but is certainly a hardware one. > It is that every time I turn up the computer its motherboard bios clock > indicates the wrong time and I have > to set time manually. My mb is an old socket A (athlon 2400) mb which > otherwise seems to be ok. I changed the small battery. (I know it could be > the battery issue) > All the same the time is wrong on startup. When computer is up it remains > ok. > > Why it can be so? > Install ntpdate or chrony. By how much is the clock always wrong? If it is a number of hours, you may have incorrectly chosen whether the BIOS clock is set in local time or UTC. Use local time if you dual-boot with Windows; otherwise use UTC. This setting is in /etc/default/rcS for Debian-based systems. The line UTC= should say UTC=yes or UTC=no.

On Sat, 20 Oct 2007, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.linux.hardware, in article <ffc3h7$r19$1@news.mtu.ru>, =SERGE= wrote: >my problem is not exactly a linux one but is certainly a hardware one. >It is that every time I turn up the computer its motherboard bios clock >indicates the wrong time and I have to set time manually. "the wrong time".... meaning what? Is it always indicating the same time like 'Wed Jun 15 09:35:37 UTC 1977' Or is it running, but is an hour, or a day, or some number of months off consistently? You are posting using windoze - if you dual boot, is the time correct in windoze? What distribution and release of Linux? What have you told the kernel about how your BIOS clock is set? [compton ~]$ date ; /sbin/hwclock -r ; date -u Sat Oct 20 09:49:39 MST 2007 Sat Oct 20 16:49:40 2007 -0.201946 seconds Sat Oct 20 16:49:40 MST 2007 [compton ~]$ Here, the _system_ clock is set to local time. The hardware clock (the BIOS clock) is set to UTC. This is desirable in UNIX, but may not work well in dual boot systems, because windoze expects the clock to be set to local time. Depending on your distribution, there is a configuration file in /etc/ that tells the boot scripts how to set the system time. Assuming your system has /etc/inittab, look a the file called out by the 'si' line [compton ~]$ grep -w si /etc/inittab si::sysinit:/etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit [compton ~]$ where you will find the section of the script that sets the system time. # Set the system clock. echo -n "Setting clock" ARC=0 UTC=0 if [ -f /etc/sysconfig/clock ]; then . /etc/sysconfig/clock Here, the boot script expects to find configuration data in the file /etc/sysconfig/clock. Finally, what timezone is /etc/localtime pointing to? >All the same the time is wrong on startup. When computer is up it >remains ok. Is the hardware clock set to the correct time? >Why it can be so? Not enough information Old guy

Previously =SERGE= <serge_mtu@mtu-net.ru> wrote: > Hello > my problem is not exactly a linux one but is certainly a hardware one. > It is that every time I turn up the computer its motherboard bios clock > indicates the wrong time and I have > to set time manually. My mb is an old socket A (athlon 2400) mb which > otherwise seems to be ok. I changed the small battery. (I know it could be > the battery issue) > All the same the time is wrong on startup. When computer is up it remains > ok. > Why it can be so? > Thank you If you correct the time in Linux, this is not copied through to the RTC, just the OS clock. You have to adjust the time in the BIOS setup. If the time runs slower or faster than realtime, you likely have a shot crystal. I have seen one board that had a clock running something like twice as fast as realtime. With very good soldering skills, it may be possible to replace the crystal in such a case. But it is easier to just synchronize on an ntp-Server on startup. Arno

On 21 Oct 2007, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.linux.hardware, in article <5nvqrsFjklm2U7@mid.individual.net>, Arno Wagner wrote: >If you correct the time in Linux, this is not copied through >to the RTC, just the OS clock. You have to adjust the time >in the BIOS setup. man hwclock --set Set the Hardware Clock to the time given by the --date option. --systohc Set the Hardware Clock to the current System Time. The following options apply to most functions. --utc Indicates that the Hardware Clock is kept in Coor- dinated Universal Time. It is your choice whether to keep your clock in UTC or local time, but noth- ing in the clock tells which you've chosen. So this option is how you give that information to hwclock. >If the time runs slower or faster than realtime, you likely have a >shot crystal. Haven't seen that very often. Most common failure mode is a dead battery, which the O/P already replaced. >I have seen one board that had a clock running something like twice >as fast as realtime. The BIOS clock? This happens with the system clock (software time kept by the kernel), and that's a parameter problem. Try setting "noapic" as a kernel boot parameter. >With very good soldering skills, it may be possible to replace >the crystal in such a case. Depends - with many modern motherboards, the crystal (32768 Hz, but this may be a tuning fork) is in the real-time-clock device. An example is the Dallas Semiconductor DS12887, DS1[234]86, or DS1587. These chips are expensive, but are a plug-in device. Old guy