Distribution: Gentoo Hardware Environment: various: P3-600 MHz, AMD64 3000Mhz, Celeron 800MHz Software Environment: various, with/without X Since updating to the 2.6.12-gentoo-r4 kernel, my machines clocks go crazy. They go wrong for a couple of minutes per hours. I tried the 2.6.13-rc3 kernel too, and 2.6.11 was running painlessly. Unfortunately, I don't have a clue where to touch, so here a dmesg of 2.6.11 (working good) and 2.6.12 (with this failure). If you need any further information, I'll provide these happily. Peace, Georg kernel 2.6.11-gentoo-r11: http://www.argeo.de/dmesg-2.6.11-gentoo-r11 kernel 2.6.12-gentoo-r5: http://www.argeo.de/dmesg-2.6.12-gentoo-r5 Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: guess it was installing the current kernel Actual Results: computers clock goes wrong Expected Results: guess the time should be right :) enina ~ # emerge info Portage 2.0.51.22-r1 (default-linux/x86/2005.0, gcc-3.3.5, glibc-2.3.5-r0, 2.6.1 2-gentoo-r4 i686) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.12-gentoo-r4 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.20GHz Gentoo Base System version 1.6.12 dev-lang/python: 2.3.4-r1, 2.4.1-r1 sys-apps/sandbox: 1.2.10 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.59-r7 sys-devel/automake: 1.4_p6, 1.5, 1.6.3, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.5 sys-devel/binutils: 2.16.1 sys-devel/libtool: 1.5.18-r1 virtual/os-headers: 2.6.11-r2 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86 ~x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-O3 -march=pentium4 -funroll-loops -fprefetch-loop-arrays -pipe" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3.4/env /usr/kde/3.4/share /config /usr/kde/3.4/shutdown /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/lib/X11/xkb /usr/lib/ mozilla/defaults/pref /usr/share/config /var/qmail/control" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-O3 -march=pentium4 -funroll-loops -fprefetch-loop-arrays -pipe" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="autoconfig distlocks sandbox sfperms strict" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://distfiles.gentoo.org http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/ distributions/gentoo" LANG="de_DE.utf8" LC_ALL="de_DE.utf8" LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1" MAKEOPTS="-j3" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="x86 X a52 aac acpi alsa apache2 apm arts avi berkdb bitmap-fonts cdr cjk cr ypt cups curl dvd dvdr eds emboss encode esd evo fam foomaticdb fortran gdbm gif glx gnome gphoto2 gpm gstreamer gtk gtk2 imlib ipv6 java jpeg libg++ libwww mad mikmod mmx motif mozilla mp3 mpeg mysql ncurses nls ogg oggvorbis opengl oss pa m pdflib perl png python quicktime readline samba sdl slang spell sse ssl tcpd t iff truetype truetype-fonts type1-fonts unicode usb vorbis wmf xine xml2 xmms xv zlib userland_GNU kernel_linux elibc_glibc" Unset: ASFLAGS, CTARGET, LINGUAS, PORTDIR_OVERLAY
Are you running the NTP daemon? If so, could you try disabling it, see what happens?
Hi Andrew, you are right, it must have to do with the ntpd daemon; disabling chrony and checking the time every hour using ntpdate shows no differences in time over the last 24 hours. Since the problem began nevertheless with the kernel update, do you have any clue where to start searching? Thanks for your help! Peace, Georg
Interesting, I've not heard of chrony (for reference - http://chrony.sunsite.dk/index.php ) before. Does it provide anything like the peerstats logging that the ntp.org ntpd provides?
Hi John, chrony is a lightweight ntp-daemon and worked quite reliable - that is, until recently :) I'm not exactly sure how to read them, but I put the chrony logs on the web for your reference: http://www.relaxing-solutions.net/measurements.log http://www.relaxing-solutions.net/statistics.log http://www.relaxing-solutions.net/tracking.log Regards, Georg
Hmm. Odd. I'm not seeing anything in the logs that point to time drifting away from the time server. Just to clarify the problem, when you say the clocks go crazy and are wrong for a couple of minutes per hour, do you mean the clock drifts (slows down or speeds up) few minutes every hour, or that for a discrete amount of time each hour, gettimeofday returns incorrect time values?
Hi John, it's like you said, during one hour, the clock drifts away for several minutes, it mostly sped up. Interestingly, during midday more than in the morning and the evenings. The really strange thing is: for the last couple of days, the problem doesn't exist anymore. I had this phenomenon on four pc's, and I switched back only one of these to the old kernel. The other three, I swear, were not touched at all concerning configuration. Yet for the last couple of days, they work normally again. Which is, basically, something I cannot understand. (Since it was me who quite often told folks that computers don't do anything on their own. Boy was I wrong :=) Well, basically, I cannot understand this. If you haven't any additional ideas, I propose closing this bug until the problem comes up again. What do you think?
Georg: Hmm. Ok, I'll go ahead and close this. Please do reopen if you've had any continuing issues.