(SOLVED) ntp gone wild

[Luis]

On 5/18/06, Derek Broughton <news at pointerstop.ca> wrote:
> Luis wrote:
>
> > Well, turns out that SMP systems NEED rtc loaded in order to work with
> > the time of the BIOS. I had rtc compile as a module (which is the
> > default way for Ubuntu Stock kernels as well).
> >
> > According to the kernel documentation:
> >
> > If you run Linux on a multiprocessor machine and said Y to
> > "Symmetric Multi Processing" above, you should say Y here to read
> > and set the RTC in an SMP compatible fashion.
> >
> > In short, Ubuntu's stock kernels should have compile-in rtc modules if
> > they have SMP enabled (which they do).
>
> hmmm.  I'm not sure about that.  After all, many of us run the SMP-enabled
> kernel, but _don't_ have an MP machine.

That goes to say that having rtc built-in (not as module) won't hurt
anybody but would benefit those who have multi-core CPUs and/or SMP
boxes. That's the "recommended" way by the Linux kernel maintainers,
they know better than us mere mortal. In my case i found out the hard
way why this is needed.

And in any case, that driver is 20k!
$> du -sh /lib/modules/2.6.15-23-686/kernel/drivers/char/rtc.ko
20K     /lib/modules/2.6.15-23-686/kernel/drivers/char/rtc.ko

No big deal adding this as a built-in module for x86/ppc/amd64 kernels.

-- 
----)(-----
Luis Mondesi
*NIX Guru

Kiskeyix.org

"We think basically you watch television to turn your brain off, and
you work on your computer when you want to turn your brain on" --
Steve Jobs in an interview for MacWorld Magazine 2004-Feb

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