Arch Linux

Convergence

Member

Registered: 2005-07-02

Posts: 377

Clock moving too fast. [solved]

I found this thread,  http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php? … ight=clock that at first seemed to be related, because I DO have an nforce2 based motherboard, and the time skew seemed about the same.  However, spread spectrum of any kind were not enabled on my system.  I've also found another thread where someone just downgraded their kernel, and that fixed the problem.  I can't seem to find that one again though.  Maybe I should use an older kernel to see if that works.

I've done a lot of googling, and there are a lot of people with a similar problem, but yet another group of people with an only vaguely similar problem (clock moving 2x) always throw their 2 cents in and take over the thread.  Darn those people!

Anyway, I have had this box for a little over a year, and had no clock problems.  I re-installed arch a month or so ago, which is when the problem began.  I used ntp like I always have, but the clock was skewing badly.  I assumed that the problem was not my system clock but an ntp issue.  It turns out that it wasn't, because even with ntp disabled, I still have the problem.

Could this be a hardware issue?  I've read somewhere that if your system battery is weak, it can cause clock skew problems, but that seems unlikely in this case because I'm pretty sure that the clock skew only happens when the system is running. 

Anyway, any help would be appreciated.

---

It's a very deadly weapon to know what you're doing
---  William Murderface

Convergence

Member

Registered: 2005-07-02

Posts: 377

Re: Clock moving too fast. [solved]

Also since I've re-installed I've had a couple of other problems that seem unrelated, but I figure I should list them just in case. 

-Pacman queries are slow the first time around.  It seems almost as if the database has to warm up.  I chalked this up to switching from reiser to xfs. 

-Sometimes my software misidentifies my CPU to be 500 mhz slower than it actually is

-Amarok occasionally freezes up.

-A few random reboots, usually when I'm running Amarok.

Anyway, they seem unlikely to be related, but since they started at the same time, I figured I should list them.

---

It's a very deadly weapon to know what you're doing
---  William Murderface

Romashka

Forum Fellow

Registered: 2005-12-07

Posts: 1,054

Re: Clock moving too fast. [solved]

Anyway, I have had this box for a little over a year, and had no clock problems.  I re-installed arch a month or so ago, which is when the problem began.  I used ntp like I always have, but the clock was skewing badly.  I assumed that the problem was not my system clock but an ntp issue.  It turns out that it wasn't, because even with ntp disabled, I still have the problem.

Have you tried clock (clocksource ?) option?
AFAIK Arch's kernel26 use clock=tsc.
Try clock=pit, clock=pmtmr.
Also, you can run hwclock --adjust (+ --localtime if your BIOS clock is not in UTC) by cron every hour.

---

to live is to die

Convergence

Member

Registered: 2005-07-02

Posts: 377

Re: Clock moving too fast. [solved]

Anyway, I have had this box for a little over a year, and had no clock problems.  I re-installed arch a month or so ago, which is when the problem began.  I used ntp like I always have, but the clock was skewing badly.  I assumed that the problem was not my system clock but an ntp issue.  It turns out that it wasn't, because even with ntp disabled, I still have the problem.

Have you tried clock (clocksource ?) option?
AFAIK Arch's kernel26 use clock=tsc.
Try clock=pit, clock=pmtmr.
Also, you can run hwclock --adjust (+ --localtime if your BIOS clock is not in UTC) by cron every hour.

Thanks for the response!  I've been a little busy, but I'll try clock=pit, to see if that helps.  It will take a while for me to figure out if the clock is still skewing.  I'll get back to you.

---

It's a very deadly weapon to know what you're doing
---  William Murderface

Convergence

Member

Registered: 2005-07-02

Posts: 377

Re: Clock moving too fast. [solved]

Yep, it worked!  Thanks!

---

It's a very deadly weapon to know what you're doing
---  William Murderface