In the case of hardware failiur, I don't know. Maybe someone else has a suggestion, I'm out.

dell suggested a bios update, but i don't think that that could help, could it? the hardware clock does not run late by some software thing, does it? the problem came when i altered the clock in linux manually, but i can hardly think of a software problem here...

Rock!!!

Well, the BIOS has codes, and just like any other codes, comes bugs. If there is a bug in the BIOS, then it may affect the computer.

I suggest you update the BIOS, see what happens. If it still doesn't work, then perhaps you should complain again to dell. Just don't mention to them you are using linux, that's a conversation stopper, even if it's a hardware problem.

Mmmm. I have exactly the same problem as described here with SuSE 9.3 on a different machine - a Mitac 8355 laptop. AFAICT my regional settings are OK, and is set to sync local time to BIOS. Well at least I've re-done them nearly every time I changed the time via YaST....

The problem only seems to have arisen since the change to daylight savings. I've tried setting the clock in BIOS, but a couple of boots later and I'm ~ 20 mins fast again (18 mins?). SUSE resynch's the BIOS/hw clock to it's own 'calculated' time at shutdown, so I'm suspicious there's a bug there somewhere.

I'm going to do some testing/reboots and see if I can find anything in the logs. Nothing there at the moment...

Update:
Googling around, looks like my problem is related to having an AMD64 CPU. I'm running 32 bit SUSE and many references are to 64 bit. Now hunting for a solution....

010101000110100001111000 decodes into Thx

Well, there's a lot of ways to work around this, but this is the one I'm trying out.

1. Reboot and set the time in the BIOS. Set it as close to exact as you can.
2. In Linux, su to root.
3. Delete the file /etc/adjtime
4. Use the command
hwclock --set --date="7/22/01 17:45:05"
using the correct date and time
5. Repeat steps 3 & 4 a few times the first week.

Found Making Computer Clock Show Correct Time at Novell's Cool Solutions after a long series of searches. The man page for hwclock goes into a fair bit of detail on how this works.

BTW I've been using the official US time site to get the correct minutes and seconds.

So far, so good - no time change at all

ws

y0u'r3 (|3v3r ;-)

Well, I have some news. I tried to alter the time on my laptop (NEC VERSA P510), which only has SuSE running on it, I got the same problem and I am absolutely sure, that there is nothing wrong with my laptop nor with my battery there. The only thing that is the same with my dell dimension is that they have SuSE 9.3 Pro and I had to alter the clock manually in Linux. Somehow SuSE must scr*w something up there, or am I completely wrong now?

Maybe a bug?

@wiresquire: why delete the file you mentioned? and why one week? if it's right it should be right immediately not after I have told my pc several times... That sounds reasonable in windows but not for linux

At this point this sounds like a bug to me... I don't know beyond that, I never tried SuSE. I tried MDK, FC, slack, knoppix, slax, and gentoo... but not SuSE.

My idea, at this point is that you could disable the syncing of the clock, at shutdown... I think the problem happens there. Attempt to find how you can remove this, and see if it solves your problem.

Well, I have tried the following which seems to work (I will do it step-by-step, so all noobs get it, should they have the problem too!):

Press [Alt] + [F2], type in the input field and then press [ENTER]. Now the console should have started.

and give your root password, close it with [ENTER].

Make sure you are connected to the internet in order to synchronise your clock this time correctly.

and press [ENTER]. Now your clock will be synchronised to the NTP Server of NASA.

and again [ENTER], so your new time is taken down in your CMOS/BIOS clock.

You have now to delete a file, which is created automatically at booting SuSE:

, can you guess it? Yep, [ENTER]!

And this should fix the problem. Well, at least it kind of did so for me, because so far I have not seen significant clock errors...

Finally, a quick YaST reference for setting up an automatic clock synchroniser:

Start YaST > Network Services > NTP client > enter a ntp server in the field, e.g. ntp.nasa.gov

I LOVE YOU!! I'd tried to set up an ntp thingy before and it hadn't worked out. But wow... Thirty seconds after reading this and BAM! You rock. Do you have one of those things I can click on to say thanks? Or did I overlook it?

Nope, I don't have such a knob, because I don't know where to find it and moreover, I am a noob too!

Today I have checked it on both pcs: they are correct, so the trick works!