Linux Clock

Adam Scheinberg’s profile picture

Linux Clock

I have noticed that over the last two years or so, one of my Linux server's clocks is constantly wrong. Sometimes, it's off by as little as a minute, but sometimes it's up to 20 minutes off. When I check it today, it was nearly an hour off. Since it runs many cron jobs, including sending some "reminder" emails to people to enter data into a database, it's a problem.
Here are the steps I took to fix the problem.
First, I created a script, "clocksync.sh." This is the contents:

ntpdate clock.redhat.com
/sbin/hwclock --systohc

Then I setup a cronjob to run this once a day. Even running it twice within 5 minutes, the time gets adjusted.
This has fixed the issue well enough, but does anyone know why or how the time could get off by so much? It's a Dell 400SC server.
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roeland
2006-08-02 12:02:40
entries we always use in any installation we do:<br />
<br />
/usr/sbin/netdate ntp.xs4all.nl > /dev/null<br />
/sbin/hwclock --systohc<br />
<br />
in the crontab, pick any time I'd say. can be every day, weekday, minute etc. take your pick ....<br />
<br />
there is no general reason why the time drifts. it at least keeps the time correct.
Eugenia
2006-08-02 12:03:10
This is a motherboard issue. Its RTC is broken. I suggest you change the mobo.
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