Slowe Clock

[Master of Reality]

errr... My clocking is running slow on Slackware.. if i set it to the correct time within a few hours its off by minutes. Does anyone know what causes this?

It wouldnt be the CMOS battery dying would it?

[KernelPanic]

That's the most probable cause, time for a new one

[Aloone_Jonez]

It might be the battery but this sounds funny to me because the electronic quartz crystal clock is not like a clockwork clock, it shouldn't run down slowly  - I would expect it to either stop or jump around randomly. The electro mechanical quartz clock (you know the sort powered by a single 1.5V cell) in my kitchen does this when it needs a new battery.

Now I know the clock in your PC is different to a mechanical quartz clock, but they both work on the same principle, pulses generated from a quartz crystal oscillator (running at 32768Hz) are being counted. A mechanical clock counts them mechanically and a digital clock counts them electronically. In both instances the frequency is divided to get 1Hz for a mechanical clock or a value to suit the resolution of the computer clock.

I don't know exactly what wrong with your clock but if replacing the battery doesn't help the quartz crystal might be damaged. Have you ever dropped the circuit board or has it been knocked about an any other way?

[bedouin]

If you don't feel like buying or installing a battery, take the easy way out and just set up a cron job to poll an NTP server every 15 minutes or so.  It won't be exact, but it will be close enough.  Better yet, set up an NTP server on your own network and poll from it, then you could poll at even shorter intervals and not worry about annoying anyone.

You should probably try to see if this is hardware or software related.  Set the time from the BIOS, leave it for a few hours without booting into an OS, and see if it's still losing time.  I'm assuming your time loss is occurring while the machine is turned on right?

I was always under the impression that when a machine was turned on, it was no longer relying on the CMOS battery for time settings.  Older machines I've dealt with over the years usually kept time fine as long as they were always powered on.

[mobrien_12]

If you don't feel like buying or installing a battery, take the easy way out and just set up a cron job to poll an NTP server every 15 minutes or so.  It won't be exact, but it will be close enough.  Better yet, set up an NTP server on your own network and poll from it, then you could poll at even shorter intervals and not worry about annoying anyone.

You should probably try to see if this is hardware or software related.  Set the time from the BIOS, leave it for a few hours without booting into an OS, and see if it's still losing time.  I'm assuming your time loss is occurring while the machine is turned on right?

I was always under the impression that when a machine was turned on, it was no longer relying on the CMOS battery for time settings.  Older machines I've dealt with over the years usually kept time fine as long as they were always powered on.

He could also set up ntpd if he has a persistant internet connection.  

Some OS's use the RTC, but Linux  behaves as you say.

[Master of Reality]

but that may bother the owner of the ntp server. So if i have my own ntp server i can up date it once a day from another server and then i can update my desktop machine from my own ntp server ever 0.34 seconds if i feel like it