time issue

[Bill Moran]

In response to "Michael P. Soulier" <msoulier at digitaltorque.ca>:

> Hello,
> 
> I recently noticed that my clock was running a few minutes slow, even though I
> have ntpd running on the box. Now I'm seeing this on occasion. 
> 
> Aug 24 20:17:10 kanga dovecot: Time just moved backwards by 105 seconds. This
> might c
> ause a lot of problems, so I'll just kill myself now.
> http://wiki.dovecot.org/TimeMov
> edBackwards
> 
> 
> Does this suggest a hardware clock issue?

In addition to the other suggestions, FreeBSD may have chosen a crappy
clock.

Believe it or not, most motherboards have multiple clocks.  Depending on
the type of clock and the quality of the mobo, not all of these clocks
are good for keeping time.  FreeBSD tries to choose the best clock at
boot time, but doesn't always get it right.  For some interesting
discussions on this topic, search the list archives for "calcru" or
check out this FAQ entry:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/troubleshoot.html#LAPTOP-CLOCK-SKEW

-- 
Bill Moran
http://www.potentialtech.com