Comment 2 for bug 45284

* Sitsofe Wheeler (<email address hidden>) wrote:
> Hmm well the error message is in response to the CMOS clock being set.
> If you are running ntpd it will periodically try and sync the CMOS clock
> to that of the more accurate system clock. However something appears to
> be going wrong and your hardware clock is vastly out of sync with
> kernel's clock.
>
> See http://www.ntp.org/ntpfaq/NTP-s-trbl-spec.htm#Q-LINUX-SET-RTC-MMSS
> for some details.

Thanks - hmm; OK - my hwclock is about 4 hours out, which I guess
explains whats going on. (I'd actually noticed the hwclock was out
a few weeks ago and did a hwclock --systohc - it looks like its
drifting off really quickly - probably time for a new battery).

> Dave:
>
> What happens if (as root) you do
> ntpdate ntp.ubuntu.com
> hwclock -c
>
> Do the messages go away?

So the messages are coming and going anyway; I guess depending how far
things are out at any one point - I've just done the ntpdate
and hwclock (although -c doesn't seem to exist so I used --systohc)
and we'll see what happens.

So this is obviously not a bug then; but I'd say two things:

   1) I think its bad form to log something every few seconds;
that probably would cause major pain for someone trying to spin
a disc down (and probably slow things down).

   2) Shouldn't the system do something more noticeable for a user
to tell them their hardware clock is out? (Not a kernel issue,
but a 'Linux for Human's' issue)

Dave
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