hwclock errors on various PowerEdge systems

Question

Hi, I have a new Dell PowerEdge 2650 and installed FC3. I update the time against an ntp server. After rebooting, the time was a few hours back. I resynched against the ntp server and tried to do a '/sbin/hwclock --systohc', which gave me the following error: select() to /dev/rtc to wait for clock tick timed out What causes this? I don't think it's a hardware problem since the same thing happens an several machines that are all new... Hwclock --show gives me the same error... The same error occurs on a SC420. On the 1850s I have, hwclock works fine. I was wondering if there was some BIOS feature that prevents non-BIOS software from changing BIOS data, but I could not find any setting in the BIOS that would let me turn that on or off...I have seen other posts on various Linux lists about this specifically on Dell servers, but nobody had a solution... Thanks, MARK

markarnold · Answer

A quick update:

I got hwclock to work by using the "--directisa" parameter.

Must be related to the mainboard/BIOS of the various Dell systems. I talked to a support guy and he confirmed that different PowerEdge systems have totally different BIOSes and mainboards. Although he has not heard of my problem before...

Now the last question: When I shut down the system it tries to sync the system time into the hardware clock and it gets the exact same error. How do I tell this process to use the "--directisa" parameter? Is there a config file or do I have to modify the respective file in etc/init.d directly?

Thanks,

MARK

TriplePC-Mike · Answer

You can edit /etc/rc.d/init.d/halt and find the command line with 'hwclock' on it. Simply modify it there. If you update your packages, this change may be overwritten.

markarnold · Answer

Actually, I found that the right thing to do is adding a line

CLOCKFLAGS='--directisa'

into the file "/etc/sysconfig/clock". This file (and the variable) is read by both the "halt" and the "rc.sysinit" scripts.

MARK

Ricky42 · Answer

Thanks! That was what I was looking for for my Fedora FC4 Test2 and a Poweredge 800 (with CERC 6-CH RAID) ...Clock is now working fine! Message Edited by Ricky42 on 05-10-2005 03:22 AM

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