ntp messed up; where I start?

[David Timms]

Michal Jaegermann wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 08, 2007 at 05:06:19PM -0500, sean wrote:
>> ntp-4.2.2p4-2.fc7.x86_64
>>
>> I set time and date this morning. Now at 16;45 local time, I 
>> show 23:09 on the computer.
> 
> This is not likely ntp.  Probably something is messing up your
> clocks.  Kernel is pickup up a clock which is broken?
> When differences are too big then ntp is giving up.
> 
> A quick check.  Set clock correctly, do not start ntpd at all.
> Is time sane after a while then?
agreed, good place to start.

I had a fast clock through most of fc5. I was able to find some bugzilla 
entries, but not a solution. It would get about 00:30:00 fast in 
00:10:00 minutes. My understanding is once the {kernel} reads the 
hardware time at boot, it keeps track of it's own ticking. When you 
shutdown, it writes the current time back to hardware time.

So if the kernel is running out of whack, then:
- there is a kernel bug that should be reported
- you can tell ntp that it is allowed to make large corrections to the 
time, and hence keep the free-running clock under control. One way is a 
machine within your network that doesn't have the problem.

There is some kernel parameters that I forgot but try the kernel boot 
options acpi and timer=pmtimer { similar} to see if that helps.

DaveT.