topic Re: system time increments by 5 hours at eache reboot - plz help in Operating System - Linux

system time increments by 5 hours at eache reboot - plz help

Maaz — Sat, 20 Nov 2004 12:40:27 GMT

Hello Dear Experts

I have a dual boot system, i.e. rhl9 and windows are both installed on the same machine.
Prblm is that whenever I boot/reboot my system in rhl9, the system time increments exactly by 5 hours. for e.g, If if boot my system in rhl9, and the time it shows/display is 1:0:0, then if i reboot my system in rhl(init 6) then it will show the time 6:0:0, and so on, i,e whenever I reboot my system in rhl9 it will aoutomatically inrement the system time exactly 5 hours.
since it only happens when I reboot my system in rhl9, i.e. If i reboot my system in windows, then windows doesnt increases the time, so that It must be a linux issue/prblm.

On this very machine I have used rhl7.x for a long period, and during the rhl7.x regime, this prblm didnt happen

plz help me resolving the issue.

Any help/suggestion/respone will be Highly appreciated.

Thanks in Advance

Regards
Maaz.

Re: system time increments by 5 hours at eache reboot - plz help

Alexander Chuzhoy — Sun, 21 Nov 2004 03:02:55 GMT

I think that you use a wrong time region.Run the command:
redhat-config-date
or
dateconfig
and see if there's a correct region zone set.

Re: system time increments by 5 hours at eache reboot - plz help

Maaz — Sun, 21 Nov 2004 07:42:33 GMT

No dear Alexander, time zone is set properly.

Re: system time increments by 5 hours at eache reboot - plz help

Huc_1 — Sun, 21 Nov 2004 08:20:31 GMT

Well if this is only true when you boot from rh9 then it is not the internal (i mean the physical) clock, so it is a software offset somewhere in the oparating system, and perhap you have overlooked something or something is corrupted

I would start by the following
# zdump /etc/localtime

this should return something like
/etc/localtime Sun Nov 21 14:15:25 2004 CET

the time zone should be the correct one, the time should be the right one and the file should be dump corectly by zdump (oe else it is corrupted)

Time problem can be fustrating to track but keep us informed.

hth

J-P

Re: system time increments by 5 hours at eache reboot - plz help

Thomas J. Harrold — Sun, 21 Nov 2004 09:43:30 GMT

Have you checked to see if NTP is configured for this system? In particular, if you are running an "ntpdate" at boot to set the time.

This would probably be set in one of the /etc/init.d scripts.

It sure sounds like a timezone problem, though.

If you need a workaround, you can use "ntpdate", in conjunction with ntp. (/etc/ntp.conf)

It's not overly difficult to setup ntp.

-tjh

Re: system time increments by 5 hours at eache reboot - plz help

Maaz — Sun, 21 Nov 2004 12:21:37 GMT

Many Thanks dear HUC
yes HUC, its purely rhl9 issue, nothing is wrong phisically.
# zdump /etc/localhost
/etc/localhost Sun Nov 21 22:01:20 2004 PKT

Many Thanks dear Thomas J Harrold
this is a standalone system i.e no ntp server is configured. the system is running its own local time.
# ntpdate
22 Nov 03:00:32 ntpdate[627]: no servers can be used, exiting

Re: system time increments by 5 hours at eache reboot - plz help

Alexander Chuzhoy — Sun, 21 Nov 2004 12:56:55 GMT

If you'll change the time with
date -s

will it return to a wrong time after reboot?
Maybe that all you need to do.After all you don't use ntpd....

Best regards.

Re: system time increments by 5 hours at eache reboot - plz help

Maaz — Sun, 21 Nov 2004 14:14:41 GMT

Yes Alexander .. it return to wrong time after reboot
i did as
# date -s 23:10:15; init 6
# date
Mon 04:12:11

Maaz

Re: system time increments by 5 hours at eache reboot - plz help

Ermin Borovac — Sun, 21 Nov 2004 20:51:12 GMT

Check /etc/sysconfig/clock file. If you hardware clock (bios) is set to local time then you need to set UTC to false.

$ grep UTC /etc/sysconfig/clock
UTC=false

Check what your hardware clock is set to with

# /sbin/hwclock

Re: system time increments by 5 hours at eache reboot - plz help

Maaz — Sun, 21 Nov 2004 22:29:10 GMT

Dear Ermin Borovac here are the results

# grep UTC /etc/sysconfig/clock
UTC=false
# date; /sbin/hwclock
Tue Nov 23 03:50:50 PKT 2004
Mon Nov 22 22:50:51 2004 -0.017312 seconds

# init 6

# date; /sbin/hwclock
Tue Nov 23 08:54:08 PKT 2004
Tue 23 Nov 2004 03:54:09 AM PKT -0.450678 seconds

Regards
Maaz

Re: system time increments by 5 hours at eache reboot - plz help

Ermin Borovac — Sun, 21 Nov 2004 23:04:52 GMT

Your hardware clock is getting synced to system time when to switch to runlevel 6 (/etc/rc.d/rc6.d/S01reboot). On reboot, system time should get set from hardware clock time (/etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit) and that is not happening.

Is /etc/localtime link to a file in /usr/share/zoneinfo/?/?. If so, delete the link and copy /usr/share/zoneinfo/?/? file (that /etc/localtime was previously linked to) to /etc/localtime.

Re: system time increments by 5 hours at eache reboot - plz help

Thomas Bianco — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 09:01:08 GMT

you probably live on the east cost.

windows is stupid and stores local time in the system clock, as opposed to most unix systems, that store GMT in the clock, then do a timezone adjust in runtime.

configure redhat to store local time in the bios, http://www.linux.com/howtos/TimePrecision-HOWTO/set.shtml

Re: system time increments by 5 hours at eache reboot - plz help

Maaz — Tue, 23 Nov 2004 02:27:49 GMT

Dear Ermin as I understand the instruction u provided ... I did the following

# ls -l /etc/localtime
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 32 Nov 23 20:56 /etc/localtime -> /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Karachi
# rm -f /etc/localtime
# ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Karachi /etc/localtime
#

yes Dear Ermin Borovac ... u mentioned the right prblm ... infact(in my case) when the system boots in rhl9, rhl doesnt set/get its time from hardware, and but rhl automatically increase the time by +5 hours, and when the system is preparing to shutdown , the linux(software) sets the hardware clock.

Many Thanks to Thomans. And Thomans Bianco I m here in Karachi, Pakistan. Ok, I'll check the url and try to solve the issue.

Regards
Maaz

Re: system time increments by 5 hours at eache reboot - plz help

Thomas Bianco — Tue, 23 Nov 2004 08:58:57 GMT

signing problem, pakistan is +5, USA East coast is -5.
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/graphics/TimeZoneMap2003.pdf

PS, this is a Zero-point post.

Re: system time increments by 5 hours at eache reboot - plz help

Ermin Borovac — Tue, 23 Nov 2004 17:23:41 GMT

Sorry for misunderstanding, I was suggesting the following

# ls -l /etc/localtime
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 32 Nov 23 20:56 /etc/localtime -> /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Karachi
# rm -f /etc/localtime
# cp /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Karachi /etc/localtime

Re: system time increments by 5 hours at eache reboot - plz help

Maaz — Wed, 24 Nov 2004 07:30:02 GMT

I m highly thankful to u, for ur kind help, and for ur continous help.
u were 100% right ... u made the right suggestions.

By following ur suggestion, prblm has been solved

# rm -f /etc/localtime
and then
# cp /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Karachi /etc/localtime

But Dear Ermin ... could u plz le me know what was the prblm, I mean if /etc/localhost is linked to /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Karachi, it will cause the prblm ... and when I followed ur instruction, that is delete ths link, and then simple copy .../Karachi to /etc/localhost, the prblm gone ... so could u plz explain ?

Many Thanks to All.

Regards
Maaz

Re: system time increments by 5 hours at eache reboot - plz help

Ermin Borovac — Wed, 24 Nov 2004 18:30:17 GMT

I think this is because /usr is separate filesystem. On system boot, system time is set from hardware clock time in /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit using hwclock. hwclock uses /etc/localtime to set the system time. When the script runs /usr is not mounted yet, so /etc/localtime is just invalid symbolic link.

Re: system time increments by 5 hours at eache reboot - plz help

Maaz — Wed, 24 Nov 2004 21:28:55 GMT

Again Many Thanks for great Explanation.
Yes /usr is a separate partition.