[chrony-dev] Feature request: Set RTC if error > X secs

[Ed W <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi, I have a feature request that I suspect might be straightforward:

- I have a number of routers with RTC that we need to initialise and get 
a rough time/date on them. This is quite a slow process booting up each, 
SSH in, wait for clock to be set and then use chronyc to force RTC to 
save the time. At the moment it takes a human to do each one (slow). The 
RTC date seems to default to 2000 (or 1970 sometimes..)

- For various reasons it's helpful to keep the RTC reasonably close to 
"real time". The reason is that the boxes can often be flashed or have 
the volatile storage reset, so the chrony offset to RTC is often lost. 
Also the routers are often left disconnected from the internet for long 
periods, so no reliable NTP is generally available (perhaps a few mins a 
week at most and over a very congested connection at that time)

- Many of the routers have a GPS attached which sets the clock

So at present I run cron once an hour and use that to sync current time 
to RTC. I could also use kernel to do this but I'm hoping an hour is 
enough for RTC drift to be measured and estimated.

So what might be very helpful is when sync is established with some 
reliable source, AND the RTC is identified as more than X seconds out, 
then immediately sync RTC.  That way I could set say 30 secs as the 
error term, measure the drift for as long as possible, but equally if 
the machine boots up with a vastly wrong clock then it's immediately 
corrected once clock sync is established (this would make initialising 
these devices much simpler)

(Case in point is I have a router which has somehow lost it's clock, 
owner is booting it up, it gets time, but then the owner turns it off 5 
mins later and the RTC doesn't get saved...)

Grateful if you could consider this...

Thanks

Ed W

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