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

[Lonni J Friedman]

On 8/27/07, James McDonald <james at jamesmcdonald.id.au> wrote:
> 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.

Thanks, but that can't be it.  I hit the problem for the first time
after 103 days of uptime.  Then I rebooted into a much newer kernel,
and hit it again after 3 days of uptime.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
L. Friedman                                    netllama at gmail.com
LlamaLand                       http://netllama.linux-sxs.org