Problems with time (in Gentoo ONLY!)

craftyc · Guru Joined: 23 May 2002 Posts: 443 Location: Behind You.

@Mods sorry if this is in the wrong forum. I thought it seemed appropriate to this forum and not the Hardware one.

I have done some testing and have found out that when I am in my Gentoo system, the hardware clock seems to run slower that normal, ie after about two hours the time is behind by 5-10 minutes, and this doesn't stop.

However in Windows XP, I do not have this problem. I have tried to set equivilant settings so that they are the same but am still getting the problem.

If anybody knows what is going on please reply. Thanks.
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lx · Posted: Wed Jun 05, 2002 5:02 pm Post subject:

What a strange little story. Time going slower, well maybe it's because linux works so much faster, :lol:

. If your on the Internet regularly you can install ntp , this will set your time and clock frequency very accuratly, but you need an internet connection so it can poll the servers regularly.

Never heard of this problem, Sry, Cya lX.
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neuron · Advocate Joined: 28 May 2002 Posts: 2371

I actualy noticed this aswell, reinstalled as I needed to resize a reiserfs partition and I haven't had any problems since, guessing this is a kernel compile option somewhere that I enabled before and not now or something.

lx · Posted: Wed Jun 05, 2002 5:23 pm Post subject:

Well only one I can think of is /dev/rtc Enhanced Realtime Clock or something under character devices. I have always compiled this in and never had trouble, well I use ntp at the moment but just installed today, so my system was running without for about two weeks (reinstall gentoo) and the time wasn't so much off, but didn't check it exactly.

Cya LX.
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craftyc · Guru Joined: 23 May 2002 Posts: 443 Location: Behind You.

neuron · Advocate Joined: 28 May 2002 Posts: 2371

craftyc... no, it can't

lx, didn't have that in before, and don't have it in now.

craftyc · Guru Joined: 23 May 2002 Posts: 443 Location: Behind You.

neuron · Advocate Joined: 28 May 2002 Posts: 2371

well, using ntp will fix things

and you don't need to reinstall, just recompile the kernel once or twice to test (possibly a LOT more though

).

ntp checking isn't the optimal way to fix a problem like this though, heh.

craftyc · Guru Joined: 23 May 2002 Posts: 443 Location: Behind You.

craftyc · Guru Joined: 23 May 2002 Posts: 443 Location: Behind You.

lx could I take a look at your /etc/ntp.conf file please? I don't know what servers to add.

Thanks.

Also how often does ntp update the time?

Thanks.
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lx · Posted: Thu Jun 06, 2002 8:32 am Post subject:

lx · Posted: Thu Jun 06, 2002 8:36 am Post subject:

pavera · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 27 May 2002 Posts: 84

Wow, I hadn't even noticed... I have had KDE running for about a week straight now... and my clock is a full 12 hours behind. I just updated it, and will check to see if it falls off again that rapidly, and I will make sure that option is compiled into the kernel, (if its not selected by default, its not in my kernel). But, this could be a pretty big bug with KDE (the other post pretty specifically narrows it down to KDE, and not gentoo in general) lx supports this theory, since he is running Gnome and has no such problems.

-update, ERTC is not compiled into my kernel.

lx · Posted: Thu Jun 06, 2002 9:43 am Post subject:

From other thread:

pavera · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 27 May 2002 Posts: 84

Can the moderators combine these threads?
(I did read that in the other thread btw... definately feels like a KDE issue)

lx · Posted: Thu Jun 06, 2002 10:45 am Post subject:

Well if we can get some more people having the problem, just check if it also happen when booting without KDE, maybe it is some problem with motherboard / chipset. (found a problem with time and via chipset, but I use this chipset without problems and with 2.4.1

. I did compile my own kernel, standard 2.4.18 with acpi-20020506 / pre-empt / lm-sensors.

Can't imagine its a problem with KDE, please try if it exists when running console for a period of time (use init 1 to boot or something).

Cya, lX

Asus a7v133a.
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pavera · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 27 May 2002 Posts: 84

In the other post, he mentioned that he had done that,

craftyc · Guru Joined: 23 May 2002 Posts: 443 Location: Behind You.

Just clarify I *did* have KDE installed (However I use fluxbox for anything graphical). This problem really pi***d me off so I decided to do a clean install of Gentoo

. Before I did the install I set the BIOS clock to the correct time. 12 hours later and it's still on the correct time.

Right now I am emerging X and KDE (and a few other apps). When they finish compiling I will report back on what happens with the time (hopefully nothing

).

I *do not* have a Dell PC so it is higly unlikely to be a BIOS problem, and also don't forget that I checked in Windows what happened with the system clock as well.

PS I hate using a text browser, is there anyway we can speed up the compile process?

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lx · Posted: Thu Jun 06, 2002 11:14 am Post subject:

Oke so it is KDE, now we have to now if it changes suddenly, maybe somebody with the problem can log the time every second or two, well as fast as possible, without running out of disk space. He can then maybe determine if there are jumps in time.

Cya lX.
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craftyc · Guru Joined: 23 May 2002 Posts: 443 Location: Behind You.

There are no "jumps". If you have another clock by you (a watch) and put it next to the clock on gkrellm, you can see that 30 seconds of the computers clock is slower than 30 seconds of the watch (by about a second).

The time is visibly slower than normal.
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cbueche · Posted: Thu Jun 06, 2002 11:27 am Post subject:

<sorry to cross-post, it seems both threads track the same problem>

The problem is caused by kmix. Kill it, the clock doesn't shift anymore.
It took me a lot of kills to find it.

method :

- run "ntpdate -d $timeserver" in a 60 second loop, notice how the offset grows.
- kill things you suspect to be wrong
- watch the offset (continue to grow means you need to assassin more stuff )

Charles
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neuron · Advocate Joined: 28 May 2002 Posts: 2371

I did test the new kde (usualy a blackbox user) then my time screwed up... that it is kde defenatly makes sence.

Rylan · n00b Joined: 08 May 2002 Posts: 41

I've had the exact same problem! And here I thought it was a bad cmos battery.
I have kde installed also, but I never run it. I run fluxbox instead, and it seems like my clock drift isn't quite so bad with flux. It's still off, just not as much. Perhaps there's a bug in fluxbox when it's compiled with kde support?

Until I can fix the problem, I'm going to try to get ntpd running.
I remember ripping some settings for /etc/ntp.conf from a mod on these forums, but I'd like to see other people's configs if possible. I've never used ntpd before and am not sure what a good default config looks like. Currently I have this in /etc/ntp.conf

Roderik · n00b Joined: 06 Jun 2002 Posts: 55 Location: Belgium

i've got a similar problem

i'm using the gentoo 2.4.19 kernel (compiled the entire thing from stage 1) and fluxbox as wm and my time is going crazy, not really a problem normaly but mrtg doesn't like to go back in tha past

here is a little demonstration of my problem, keep in mind that i'm setting my clock every minute with ntp

craftyc · Guru Joined: 23 May 2002 Posts: 443 Location: Behind You.

Well after doing the (extremly long) reinstall :cry:

I finally have my system up and running. So far I have not noticed a lag in time. It's working perfectly.

I still have no idea what caused this though. I have not compiled the option mentioned above into my kernel this time either.

This is very strange

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