[OT] NTP servers - was Re: Kernel clock issue "Clocksource tsc unstable"

[NoOp]

On 02/27/2009 08:22 PM, Rashkae wrote:
> NoOp wrote:
> 
>> 
>> I also purposely remove the ntp.ubuntu.com/canonical servers; I' don't
>> mind providing some data, but sync'ing to them just seems a little big
>> brother/Microsoft'ish to me.
>> 
>>
> 
> Unless you're doing something that's extremely time sensitive (such as
> synchronizing to those time based RSA security tokens) I don't really
> see the point to synchronizing with ntp at all.   Any functioning clock
> should be able to keep track of wall time within a few seconds accuracy
> per month.
> 

Ah, but you are forgetting about a bad CMOS battery that doesn't keep a
bios clock updated. We've been through this before... via the thread.

Just a few months ago my daughter-in-law called and informed me that her
time was "off" and folks were complaining about the timestamps on her
emails. Of course it was an old system and the CMOS battery had spit the
dummy & I'd failed to set ntp up on the system during install.
  The solution, until I could replace the battery, was of course to turn
on ntp and ensure that the system (it was Gutsy then) used ntp to sync.
I replaced the battery and all was fine. Note: I replaced the computer
(1.8Ghz) with a faster (2.4Ghz) system and now use the 1.8Ghz as a test
machine. It has no dmesg errors and uses tsc & seems to work just fine
w/without ntp, but my point is that a bad CMOS battery *can* indeed
cause clock issues.