topic Re: Time drift in Operating System - Linux

Time drift

at coetsee_1 — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 12:58:15 GMT

Out client have 2 x HP ML370G4 X3.4 2MB Hi Perf EU Rack Srvr with
384954-B21 RHEL 4 AS Std
Both systems gain about 10 minutes per hour.
Where do I start looking for the problem ?

Re: Time drift

Ivan Ferreira — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 13:19:57 GMT

Are you using NTP? Are your timezone correctly configured? Check your BIOS time and ensure that the /etc/sysconfig/clock, ZONE UTC and ARC settings are correct.

Re: Time drift

at coetsee_1 — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 13:27:45 GMT

Thank you. The site is in Tanzania and I am in South Africa. It will take about 18 hours to get tried, so hopefully by to-morrow night I will know.
They claim that they are not using NTP, but I was not on site during installation

Re: Time drift

Steve_160 — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 00:09:46 GMT

I think what Ivan is trying to say is that you SHOULD be running ntpd.

Check the man pages on ntpd and ntpdate. In a nutshell, here are the commands I call from a cronjob to set the time. Note that ntpd has to be stopped before running netdate.

killall ntpd
/usr/sbin/ntpdate -B pool.ntp.org
/usr/sbin/ntpd
hwclock --systohc

At bootup, "-b" should be used instead of "-B." You don't want to change the slew based on a free-running hardware clock.

Re: Time drift

Vitaly Karasik_1 — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 03:17:30 GMT

does linux run under VMWARE?

If no, it may be problem with BIOS clock/drivers.
Even running NTP is a good idea, I'll suggest to investigate drift problem anyway.

Re: Time drift

BUPA IS — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 09:27:43 GMT

I concur ntp is the way forward. You may find that tock.nml.CSIR.co.za gives you a better ntp response than the global pool for your Tanzanian location It is fed by the CSIR atomic clocks in Pretoria which are part of the UTC aggregation .

http://www.csir.co.za/plsql/ptl0002/PTL0002_PGE100_LOOSE_CONTENT?LOOSE_PAGE_NO=7330214
Mike

Re: Time drift

Gudufl — Fri, 16 Aug 2013 07:22:45 GMT

I now that the earlier posts are years ago, never the less I am experiancing a "time drift" too.

I and using ntp and the tock.... CSIR time server too on a HP ServerTower ProLiant ML350 G6, QC Xeon E5620(2.40GHz)

12MB, 8 x SFF, P410i/256MB, 6GB(3x2GB), 460W PSU, DVD-ROM using VMware ESX, 4.1.0, 320092 and am experiancing a once of 10min time drift that only appears when the server has to sync the time with the CSIR time server after a reboot of the VMware host. Any suggestions?