keeping time

[Mikus Grinbergs]

On Mon, 19 Mar 2007 22:37:37 -0400 "Michael R. Head" <burner at suppressingfire.org> wrote:
> On Mon, 2007-03-19 at 21:57 -0400, Jeffrey F. Bloss wrote:
> > I'm not sure how you might want to go about making anything close to
> > "perfect" adjustments, but the command you're probably looking for is
> > 'hwclock'. It can set your system time to "BIOS" time directly, and you
> > should be able to use it to determine a fairly accurate rate of even
> > hardware clock drift, and after that's known, to further adjust your
> > time if needed.
>
> Specifically, note the section about the "Adjust" section and how it
> uses /etc/adjtime

Status report:  Using 'hwclock --show', I see that my hardware
clock is keeping time properly.

But the best I can do with 'hwclock --hctosys' is to reset the
software clock when it has gone ahead.  And my applications then
have problems as the time "jumps backward".  'hwclock' saves me
some keystrokes (over resetting from a wristwatch), but it is
still a reset.  [What 'hwclock' (plus /etc/adjtime) really do is
to adjust for the rate of drift of the hardware clock, such that
time can be kept accurately while the system is powered off.]

>
> Also check out the adjtimex package.

Thank you.  'adjtimex' *is* meant for situations like mine.  Now
if only I could understand it.  Whoever its man page was written
for, it was not me.

Downloaded adjtimex, ran it without any special parameters, and
now my (software) system time runs slightly slow (that's ok - my
applications do not have a problem with time "jumping forward"
if I need to reset time in that direction).

'adjtimex' solved my problem of the (software) system time running
fast.  Thank you, all on 'ubuntu-users' who responded.

mikus