[SOLVED] Gigabyte BIOS clock is six 6 hours ahead of desktop clock.

1sweetwater! · 04-02-2013, 02:34 AM

BIOS clock is six 6 hours ahead of desktop clock?
I'm using a fresh new built pc and installed Mint Linux 14 Mate.
BUILD: Gigabyte A55M-DS2 ver 2.2/AMD A4-3400/8GB 2x4 Kingston pc3 1333/light-on cd\dvd/Seagate 1TB Barracuda/Antec 430w.
Upon receiving the board I reset cmos and took my time putting it together... several days. Install of Mint went without hitch but noticed BIOS time was 6 hours ahead of Desktop time. Change one and the other remains six hours different.
I think I had one boot blank/black screen event on the gigabyte build also. My memory is not the best today....
Weird thang is same thing happened with two previous Biostar motherboards on a different hardware build shown below: Biostar Ta75M ver 6./A83850/8GB 2x4 Mushkin Radioactive pc3 1333/1TB Seagate Barracuda/ASUS CD/DVD. The second RMA replacement board was just sent a week ago for second RMA should be getting third Biosatar back soon. First biostar had boot [all boot noises went as normal but sometimes monitor was black/blank and delaying boot seem to make this less of a problem] and other mouse keyboard and drive controller issues besides bios time being off by eight hours. Second Biostar had time issues as well as other stuff but drives seemed to function and no boot issues. These first two Biostars were powered by the same Mushkin Volta 500w PSU. Tried resetting BIOS and repacing CMOS battery on these Biostar units.
Hope this isn't too scrambled to understand...

pan64 · 04-02-2013, 02:43 AM

have you checked the timezone settings?

eSelix · 04-02-2013, 04:28 AM

This is normal. Time in BIOS is stored as UTC. And your system use your country local time, which is, as you see, 6 hours different. Windows systems store time in BIOS the same as on system clock, but Linux not by default (it can be configured if someone need that behavior), but storing time in UTC is the best approach.

1sweetwater! · 04-07-2013, 01:10 AM

I don't know what to think? One reply [pan64] says It's a problem with Timezone settings, however correct TZ was set during installation and desktop time was off 6 hours. Correcting the Desktop time caused the hardware time to become off 6 hours.
TZ is MST.
Other responder [eSelix] says 6 hr difference is normal in hardware clock because of UTC. I don't remember having this problems on earlier versions of Linux. Not sure which to believe.

Computer also has a boot problem where by part of the time the boot process is invisible. bios splash appears following a brief single beep. Monitor Screen goes blank then shows this text ”Loading Operating System” with “Boot CD/DVD underneath”. There's a several more seconds of black blank screen with a desktop login chime and continued black/blank screen if login screen does not appear. Even with a blank/black screenafter login chime I may type my user name and password and get the desktop music playing as it loads but does not display.
If login screen does appear afte login chime then I am able to use the PC without having to reboot. There seems to be no set value for how many times I have to reboot to get a login screen but usually happens between one and three reboots. I'm curious why it's loading an OS before it boots to a cd or hard drive and why it sometimes requires reboots to get a visible desktop?
Could there be something wrong with motherboard or BIOS re: time and boot?

pan64 · 04-07-2013, 02:02 AM

probably it is a battery problem, looks like the bios settings are not stable.

1sweetwater! · 04-07-2013, 03:23 AM

Thanx for your efforts and please keep trying. Battery was replaced before writing this. I can change time to correct ie MST in bios and reboot to bios and time remains the same. When I boot to a desktop the bios time remains the same but desktop time is 6 hrs off hardware. If I change desktop time to reflect current then hardware clock changes by 6 hrs.
The other Sr. member said this is normal for Linux but I cannot remember Linux ever being this way. Anyway if bios time isn't as important as desktop time I could maybe live with it. However I'm still out there as to what's correct.
I thought since I was having boot issues someting might also be goofy in bios regarding the time difference?

michaelk · 04-07-2013, 05:09 AM

The BIOS clock can be either local time or UTC. If you are dual booting it should be local and if only linux can be either but must be configured correctly in the (depends on distribution) /etc/default/rcS file or your system clock will be off by the UTC offset.

I would not expect the boot problem to be causing the time issues.

eSelix · 04-07-2013, 08:07 AM

You must decide if you want the hardware clock show you the same time that your desktop local time, which is not recommended for some reasons (minor for common desktop users). But if it really, really bother you - you can change option in "/etc/default/rcS" file to "UTC=no". Or leave it as you have now, where hardware clock is set in UTC and your desktop time is set as UTC-6 hours, this is your current local time in Montana (Mountain Daylight Time), because motherboards usually have no timezone setting.

As michaelk wrote, if you use Windows, you need to change config, because Windows (I am not aware of newest versions) cannot be configured to store time in BIOS as UTC.

If you never encouter this it is maybe because your BIOS has not been set in UTC or you did not used Timezone setting.

Quote:

Monitor Screen goes blank then shows this text ”Loading Operating System” with “Boot CD/DVD underneath”

Change in BIOS to first trying boot from hard drive. Check SMART status for example with application "gsmartcontrol" that you have no errors on disk.

Quote:

There's a several more seconds of black blank screen with a desktop login chime and continued black/blank screen if login screen does not appear.

If you use GRUB2 then set in file "/etc/default/grub.cfg" option "GRUB_TERMINAL=console" (by default it should be just commented by # on front). After this invoke command "update-grub" and reboot to check if you still have "black screen" issue. Some graphics cards have problems with new GRUB settings. It can be fixed by some "magic", but disabling graphic mode is simplest and give you answer if it is really that reason, also you will see if your PC is not doing something lenghty during bootup.

About later time black screen it may be a problems with graphics driver. Check that you have installed newest version and you have updated operating system. Check also logs "/var/log/syslog" and "/var/log/Xorg.*.log" after starting PC. It can also be a hardware problem with monitor or cable, can you check how behave another?

Quote:

There seems to be no set value for how many times I have to reboot to get a login screen

I think you did not reboot by pressing "reset" button. You should have option to change to text console by CTRL+ALT+F1, and switch back to X (which is usually on tty7) by CTRL+ALT+F7, if not then reboot by CTRL+ALT+DEL.

1sweetwater! · 04-09-2013, 01:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by eSelix

You must decide if you want the hardware clock show you the same time that your desktop local time, which is not recommended for some reasons (minor for common desktop users). But if it really, really bother you - you can change option in "/etc/default/rcS" file to "UTC=no". Or leave it as you have now, where hardware clock is set in UTC and your desktop time is set as UTC-6 hours, this is your current local time in Montana (Mountain Daylight Time), because motherboards usually have no timezone setting.

As michaelk wrote, if you use Windows, you need to change config, because Windows (I am not aware of newest versions) cannot be configured to store time in BIOS as UTC.

If you never encouter this it is maybe because your BIOS has not been set in UTC or you did not used Timezone setting.

=..=
I finally got/saw this UTC setting thang when I stumbled on it in Linux Mint 14.1 menus. [I'm in need of menus to prompt me mentally to be able to use a computer.] So I understand that I need to change that setting in the OS to be able to enable BIOS to use local time other than default UTC.
=..=

Change in BIOS to first trying boot from hard drive. Check SMART status for example with application "gsmartcontrol" that you have no errors on disk.
=..=
I tried this already and whether cd or hd was firt boot device it all still acted the same.
=..=

If you use GRUB2 then set in file "/etc/default/grub.cfg" option "GRUB_TERMINAL=console" (by default it should be just commented by # on front). After this invoke command "update-grub" and reboot to check if you still have "black screen" issue. Some graphics cards have problems with new GRUB settings. It can be fixed by some "magic", but disabling graphic mode is simplest and give you answer if it is really that reason, also you will see if your PC is not doing something lenghty during bootup.

About later time black screen it may be a problems with graphics driver. Check that you have installed newest version and you have updated operating system. Check also logs "/var/log/syslog" and "/var/log/Xorg.*.log" after starting PC. It can also be a hardware problem with monitor or cable, can you check how behave another?

I think you did not reboot by pressing "reset" button. You should have option to change to text console by CTRL+ALT+F1, and switch back to X (which is usually on tty7) by CTRL+ALT+F7, if not then reboot by CTRL+ALT+DEL.

I've got dementia and command line is impossible to remember so I just held the shift key down after system beep and got the recovery menu and chose to update grub. And guess what no more blank/black screen boot problem. So I also left hardware clock to UTC also. It sometimes takes me a while to catch on!!!! Thanx

1sweetwater! · 04-15-2013, 01:49 AM

solved boot to black/blank screen issue by installing FGLRX.

jACK-ah · 04-17-2013, 10:37 PM

You pc works on feauture lol.... jokes a part bro checkthe time zone If dosent work froam there so check the battery inside cpu Its a small battery round shape change that its gona be old

1sweetwater! · 04-18-2013, 12:00 AM

not sure what you mean?

michaelk · 04-18-2013, 07:21 AM

I believe the poster actually meant your PC works in the future. However, you have already posted the BIOS battery was replaced.

You can mark this thread as solved under the thread tools pull down menu.

1sweetwater! · 04-18-2013, 12:48 PM

still don't know what that means and I can't find where to mark it solved?