Problem Keeping System Time Accurate

Bill Davidsen davidsen at tmr.com
Fri Nov 28 18:54:04 UTC 2008


Robert L Cochran wrote:
> On my Dell D420 laptop, when running Fedora 10, I am having a problem
> where the system time is off by about 5 hours from the actual time in my
> timezone -- Eastern Standard Time (EST). The date is always correct.
> Eventually, the time resets to the correct time for my zone. This shows
> up when I run Microsoft Windows XP too. I have thought it might be the
> coin cell battery on the laptop's motherboard going bad, but if that
> were so the date would be wrong too.
> 
> Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?
> 
Others have told you that the issue is probably that Linux and Windows don't 
agree on you hardware clock settings. You get the least hassle in Linux with 
hardware clock in UCT, and you can tell XP to use the clock in UCT as well, but 
people tell me that this fix is not completely satisfactory. I am not running 
XP, so I can't say, my one laptop with an XP partition seems to work right, but 
I haven't booted it in months.

You may have to run the clock in local time, which will result in changes twice 
a year, and possible issues running things near the time change. See "man 
hwclock" for information which may be useful on reading the actual setting. If 
you have XP and Linux setting and resetting the clock, you *will* have an issue 
eventually, so you should decide which way you want to run and live with it.

-- 
Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com>
   "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot




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