Kern.timecounter.hardware issues

[Charles Howse]

> Hi,
> The following appeared in my daily security run output:
> 
> curly.howse.no-ip.org kernel log messages:
> > Timecounter "TSC"  frequency 300683473 Hz
> 
> I have a Celeron 300 CPU, if that matters.
> 
> A quick Google for 'Timecounter "TSC"  frequency' led me to 
> believe that I should change the hardware timecounter to i8254 with:
> 
> sysctl -w kern.timecounter.hardware=i8254
> 
> I did that, rebooted, and ran sysctl -a again, only to see 
> that kern.timecounter.hardware had reverted to TSC.
> 
> I have both i8254 and TSC showing in dmesg.
> 
> Should I make the change permanent across reboots, and if so, how?
> 
> BTW, are any of you getting the same messages from this list 
> over and over again?
> I am, I wonder what's going on?

After re-reading man sysctl, I see I should be able to set any values I
need in /etc/sysctl.conf
I added kern.timecounter.hardware=i8254, saved, rebooted, no joy, still
set to TSC.
The handbook doesn't have anything specific.
What's going on?