[Linux-users] the system clock stopped?!?

[James McDonald]

Lonni J Friedman wrote:
> I've got a Fedora 7 (x86) system that started exhibiting truly bizarre
> behavior about a week ago.  Basically, the clock stopped working.  If
> I run 'date' it shows the date/time from a few days earlier, and it
> *never* changes.  If I touch a file, it has the date/timestamp from
> the time/date in date output.  The odd thing is that this behavior
> only happens when the system sits relatively idle for a long chunk of
> time (at least 24 hours).  If i'm actively using it every day, then
> its fine.  If I reboot, then the problem goes away (and the system has
> the correct time after rebooting).
>
> The first time that this happened was last weekend (Aug 18), and I had
> to reboot it last Monday (Aug 20) to fix the problem.  Its now
> happened again.  At this moment in time, date claims that its Sat Aug
> 25, even though its actually Sun Aug 26 right now.
>
> To make matters worse, the system behaves oddly when this problem
> occurs.  I suspect its because anything that relies on getting an
> accurate (or changing) clock is failing.  If I attempt to reboot
> cleanly, it just never happens.  The system acts frozen in time.
>
> I've checked dmesg & messages, and there's nothing there.  messages
> just stops logging anything around the time that the clock appears to
> have frozen.
>
> Anyone ever seen this bizarre behavior, or have any ideas what might
> be going on?
>
>   
I had similar bezarre behaviour after an F7 kernel upgrade recently (a 
couple of months ago). The clock just wasn't advancing. They released a 
new kernel very quickly after the problem.

My fix was to go back to the previous kernel until the new release came out.

I can't remember the exact details but I may have posted to the list 
about it.