OS (debian) clock slow, hardware clock seems OK
 

I am running debian testing (squeeze). Ever since I upgraded I noticed that my OS clock runs very slow. Probably loosing seconds per minute. My hardware clock seems to run pretty accurately, actually. Isn't this fairly extreme? If so, how do I fix this?

I have tried ntp, but that did not work. Eventhough ntp gives no errors (/var/log/syslog) it never seems to sync.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

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Dell Precision 380 (Intel Pentium D)
Debian Squeeze

CPU speeds are not exactly a perfect clock: Live with it
 

Computer clocks operate from CPU speed. A thing called a pre-scaler divides the CPU intervals to give a larger CPU speed per second or whatever. In other words it is a counter that counts up to ten or so before incrementing a digit in a register so ten now becomes one (uno) value of something else.Because of the variables in manufacture electronic circuits are always slightly different which causes any thing based on CPU ; and or instruction speed, to vary slightly. My own CPU runs a little fast which changes my O.S Clock about ten minutes a month or so. There might be something you can set in bios but I'm not informed on that currently.Your clock speed should not be fooled with unless you are very knowledgeable on the subject. Electrical current is directly proportionate to HEAT so if you over-clock your CPU it could fry. In my opinion the CPU manufacturer knows best. I don't bother with the internet time thing because it never works right and I assume it's just another piece of garbage that people assume works like a machine because they are clueless of how it works. I have a duel booter and both the O.S system clocks always equally miss matches my wall clock so I assume that bios has something to do with it. As far as it being configurable as a shell script in a (configure file) I intuitively doubt you will find the information other than the person that compiled the Kernel. This info. is not one hundred percent accurate so you might want to search the terms I've used.

Thanks. I guess I like to have my system clock correct so that my file times and logging times are right. I guess I too would also just assume not mess around with my CPU speed. In the past I have had pretty good luck with NTP, I just haven't gotten it to work since my upgrade. I don't expect NTP to give me atomic clock accuracy but being off by a few seconds is fine for what I want. If I don't do something, though, I will be off by 24 minutes every day.

So my options are to contact the debian kernel team or to get NTP working?

... and maybe starting a thread here about what you did with NTP and what it (didn't!) do.

Is a hardware clock bios?
 

It's not uncommon for unwanted results to occur after you have altered a library. Sometimes when you add an application another one won't work right or will not execute. It does not matter if you used your package manager or not. I think the people who compose Linux Distros do a great job but they are never perfect. Their debugger for the entire O.S needs to be improved. If you get NTP to work it might be helpful to know how often it runs. It could be that a major mistake was made and it won't be corrected until they release their new distro.