Re: [chrony-users] RTC Trimming Issues

[Ed W <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 29/10/2012 21:01, John.Florian@xxxxxxxx wrote:

Any ideas how to get these RTCs to do the right thing and join us in this decade?

Fun problem!

Out of curiousity, have you taken one dodgy machine, logged in and figured out of it's a problem setting the RTC, or with it *staying* set?

eg
- run "trimrtc", then after a few seconds do you see the correct date with "rtcdata"?
- if you stop chrony, does hwclock show the correct time in the RTC?
- Can you set the correct (ish) time with hwclock? When you reboot does it stay set?

My thought might be that something is wrong with the rtcclock driver in the kernel. When you try and set the time it's not getting set.  Reading is working for whatever reason. Any clues on boot?

I'm reasonably sure that my RTC driver (PC Engines ALIX) sometimes pukes on boot in some wierd way if the clock is unset. Unable to say how, but basically cold boot with no correct clock and chrony behaves wierdly and claims no RTC driver, etc. Do a warm reboot and all is well second time, chrony can set the clock and subsequent boots are fine.. Seems like it either needs "something" set to make it happy, or perhaps there is some "is this sensible" check in the kernel.  Not bothered to debug...

Good luck

Ed W