Computer loosing time

[NoOp]

On 05/15/2008 12:12 PM, Rashkae wrote:

> 
> Thanks all for the suggestion.. Unfortunately, after a grueling surgery
> to replace my power supply, there is no change.  The system clocks still
> looses about 5 seconds per hour (note that the CMOS clock remains on the
> right time, which can be verified with hwclock -r)
> 
> Both power supply (the old and the new) check out ok in the BIOS and on
> a power supply tester.
> 

man hwclock makes for some interesting reading :-) thanks for posting
that as I never even knew it existed.

FWIW: The CMOS battery can be dead as a doornail (where did that term
come from anyway?) and Ubuntu still works just fine. I have an old Clevo
lapbrick where the CMOS died a few years ago. I replaced it with an old
CMOS battery off of a motherboard that was in a junkbox in the garage,
and it ran Ok until a few weeks ago. It is dead again & it's too much of
a bother to tear the laptop apart and replace it, so I just set it at
BIOS time & off I go. Battery has been dead for 2 years too... Ubuntu
pops right in and the clock keeps pace with my other systems - pretty
much to the second.

sudo hwclock -r on that laptop (Hardy) shows:

-0.514280 seconds

and on this desktop (Gutsy with working CMOS etc)

-0.706494 seconds

and -0.265779 seconds on another desktop (Hardy).

Time on the desktops are configured for ntp via pool.ntp.org servers, on
the laptop with the dead CMOS it has not been configured and is at it's
default (manual). However, I seem to recall that at boot, the laptop
does go out to get it's initial time from the Canonical ntp server even
if ntp is not installed.