4.8 "alternate system clock has died" error

[Uwe Doering]

Charles Sprickman wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> I've been digging through Google for more information on this.  I have a 
> 4.8 box that's been up for about 430 days.  In the last week or so, top 
> and ps have started reporting all CPU usage numbers as zero, and running 
> "systat -vmstat" results in the message "The alternate system clock has 
> died! Reverting to ``pigs'' display".
> 
> I've found instances of this message in the archives for some 3.x users, 
> some pre 4.8 users and some 5.3 users.
> 
> There were a number of suggestions including a patch if pre-4.8, sending 
> init a HUP, and setting the following sysctl mib: 
> "kern.timecounter.method: 1".
> 
> I'm already at 4.8-p24, so I did not look into patching anything, and 
> HUP'ing init and setting the sysctl mib does not seem to have any effect.
> 
> I'm not quite ready to believe that some hardware has actually failed. 
> Perhaps due to the long uptime something has rolled over?

We had this once at work, quite a while ago.  The "alternate system 
clock" is in fact the Real Time Clock (RTC) on the mainboard.  In our 
case we were lucky in that it was just the quartz device that failed due 
to an improperly soldered lead which finally came off.  We fixed the 
soldering and the problem was gone.

Now, there are of course plenty of other hardware reasons why the RTC 
can fail, even temporarily like in your case.  Perhaps it is really time 
for a new mainboard.

    Uwe
-- 
Uwe Doering         |  EscapeBox - Managed On-Demand UNIX Servers
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