I've hosed my clock setup

[Kevin O'Gorman]

On Sat, 23 Aug 2003, Kurt Wall wrote:

> Quoth Kevin O'Gorman:
> > I don't know what I did the last time I went to adjust my machine's
> > clock, but it seems Linux no longer talks nice to the hardware clock.
> > Every time I boot, the clock is off by 7 hours, and for my setup
> > thats usually once a day (no fault of Linux, I just have to shut this
> > off at night).
> > 
> > The system is RH 7.3, and the contents of /etc/sysconfig/clock are
> > 
> > ZONE="America/Los_Angeles"
> > UTC=false
> > ARC=false
> 
> Do you have an /etc/localtime file? If so, it probably is a symlink
> to the actual timezone file.

I do, and it points to /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/LosAngeles, just
like it should.

> 
> > I keep the hardware clock in local time because I dual-boot to other
> > OS-es once in a while.  Here's what it looks like:
> 
> Okay. It seems like you should be able to rerun the timezone 
> configuration portion of setup and make sure that everything is
> copacetic.

I've tried some things that may be what you're talking about to no
avail.  Perhaps if you were more (i.e. very very) specific I could
say if I've done that.

> 
> > [root at treat rc.d]# /sbin/hwclock -r
> > Fri 15 Aug 2003 07:53:56 AM PDT  0.849306 seconds
> > [root at treat rc.d]# /sbin/hwclock -r --localtime
> > Fri 15 Aug 2003 07:54:12 AM PDT  0.268908 seconds
> > [root at treat rc.d]# /sbin/hwclock -r --utc
> > Fri 15 Aug 2003 12:54:18 AM PDT  0.280746 seconds
> > [root at treat rc.d]#
> 
> hwclock --hctosys (or hwclock -s) should sync the system time
> to the the hardware clock.

Yes, provided I also use --localtime.  That's what worked, but
placement of the command is a hack the way I did it.  I put it in
the start() function of /etc/rc.d/init.d/syslog, and it does not
belong there with an unconditional --localtime.

> 
> > However, on each reboot KDE's clock in the panel, and the 'date'
> > program both report time as if I used UTC; in the above example
> > that was 12:54 AM.
> > 
> > I'm baffled and sleepless in California.....
> 
> Presumably, nptdate (deprecated for "ntpd -q", it appears) should be 
> able to set your hardware clock to the "right" time so long as you have 
> an NTP server setup in /etc/ntp.conf.

I do not have NTP working on this machine.  And I'm not complaining about
the HW clock; it's close enough, and I can adjust it to my Wave clock
(Naval Observatory time, I think) every so often.  Eventually I'll set
up NTP, but frankly I want to get this nailed first.

> 
> Kurt
>