http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=495417 Summary: boot.clock (hwclock --adjust) broken by design (clock "corrected" several hours/days) Classification: openSUSE Product: openSUSE 11.0 Version: Final Platform: i686 OS/Version: openSUSE 11.0 Status: NEW Severity: Major Priority: P5 - None Component: Basesystem AssignedTo: bnc-team-screening@forge.provo.novell.com ReportedBy: Ulrich.Windl@rz.uni-regensburg.de QAContact: qa@suse.de Found By: --- Created an attachment (id=286025) --> (http://bugzilla.novell.com/attachment.cgi?id=286025) /etc/adjtime as found on the system after the clock was set once again User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.19) Gecko/20081213 SUSE/1.1.14-1.1 SeaMonkey/1.1.14 When the hardware clock (RTC chip) ever got the time incorrectly, and you set the time correctly in Linux, the clock goes completely crazy. For examply when the clock was correct before booting openSUSE, the clock is two days behind when boot is complete. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Use some software (e.g. a live CD that assumes a different timezone than you live in, and your RTC is set to local time (usual for a dual-boot system) 2. Boot openSUSE to find out that the time is incorrect. Use "date -s" to set the time correctly (as root) 3. Reboot 4. Boot openSUSE again, maybe after a few days Actual Results: The time is completely wrong (several hours or days) Expected Results: As the time was correctly set, the time should be correct. The design, specifically of "hwclock --adjust" is completely broken, because it assumes that no other program is setting the clock. For a dual-boot system this assumption does not hold, and it does not hold when NTP is used to set the time. Despite of that is the range in which hwclock adjusts the time completely idiotic: If someone actually sells a clock chip that is wrong by more than a minute per day (almost 695 PPM), it's not a clock chip, and it should be dumped (NTP quits if the error is more than about 500 PPM). Today's wrist watches have an error of less than 3 seconds per day, most of them only about one second per day (12-35 PPM). Now if hwclock adjusts the clock about eight hours per day (about 300000PPM), that's completely free of any commonsense; if it adjusts the time back by more than a day within one boot (the clock was set to the correct time in Windows/XP when it was found to be wrong), that's completely idiotic. -- Configure bugmail: http://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug.