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My Fit-PC2 can't keep the time
Posted: Wed Apr 21, 2010 4:50 pm
by monnier
I'm having serious trouble with time keeping on my machine (using Debian testing). I'm not talking about a slow drift: it can easily lose more than 30min per hour. Here is an example session:
# (export TZ=UTC LANG=C; while sleep 60; do echo $(su - monnier -c "ssh fmsmemgm date"; hwclock; date); done)
Wed Apr 21 15:27:35 UTC 2010 Wed Apr 21 15:27:36 2010 -0.328802 seconds Wed Apr 21 15:27:35 UTC 2010
Wed Apr 21 15:30:35 UTC 2010 Wed Apr 21 15:30:36 2010 -0.172800 seconds Wed Apr 21 15:30:35 UTC 2010
Wed Apr 21 15:36:38 UTC 2010 Wed Apr 21 15:36:39 2010 -0.547803 seconds Wed Apr 21 15:31:38 UTC 2010
Wed Apr 21 15:52:41 UTC 2010 Wed Apr 21 15:52:42 2010 -0.703776 seconds Wed Apr 21 15:32:41 UTC 2010
Wed Apr 21 15:53:44 UTC 2010 Wed Apr 21 15:53:45 2010 -0.594683 seconds Wed Apr 21 15:33:44 UTC 2010
Wed Apr 21 15:59:47 UTC 2010 Wed Apr 21 15:59:48 2010 -0.641850 seconds Wed Apr 21 15:34:47 UTC 2010
Wed Apr 21 16:00:49 UTC 2010 Wed Apr 21 16:00:51 2010 -0.813433 seconds Wed Apr 21 15:35:50 UTC 2010
Wed Apr 21 16:11:52 UTC 2010 Wed Apr 21 16:11:54 2010 -0.985030 seconds Wed Apr 21 15:36:53 UTC 2010
#
According to the "sleep 60", the loop should run about once per minute, but it sometimes ends up waiting five minutes or more. I'm running ntpd on this machine. Have also tried openntpd but it did not help.
I do not see anything relevant in the syslog files. Dmesg sometimes gives me tons of "set_rtc_mmss: can't update from NN to MM", but not always.
The weird thing is that this exact same Debian installation was working perfectly fine at the very same location (tho on different hardware: I just took out the drive, replaced the big tower with the tiny Fit-PC2 and replugged the disk). So my suspicion is on the Fit-PC2.
Has someone seen something like that?
Re: My Fit-PC2 can't keep the time
Posted: Thu Apr 22, 2010 7:24 am
by redada
Hi,
i have the same problem here.
Have a look at this thread:
http://www.fit-pc2.com/forum/viewtopic. ... =clock+lag
I send my FitPC back to Compulab for further investigation on this.
Have a nice day.
redada
Re: My Fit-PC2 can't keep the time
Posted: Thu Apr 22, 2010 7:43 am
by irads
Re: My Fit-PC2 can't keep the time
Posted: Fri Apr 23, 2010 4:40 pm
by monnier
I'm glad to see it's not that I was doing something silly.
But w.r.t to the information in the above topic, my tests indicate that even disabling DPMS altogether doesn't help, and as mentioned earlier enabling NTPD didn't help either (because the instability of the clock is much larger than what NTPD is designed to handle).
Re: My Fit-PC2 can't keep the time
Posted: Fri Apr 23, 2010 10:42 pm
by irads
Did you try changing C-States in BIOS to
GV3 only ?
See
http://fit-pc2.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=512
Re: My Fit-PC2 can't keep the time
Posted: Sun May 02, 2010 5:17 am
by monnier
I first tried to keep C-states but disable the "extended C-states", but that did not help. Then I disabled the C-states altogether (keeping GV3-only) and it seems to work correctly now. I also feel like it fixed a few other minor/vague issues I've had.
An interesting observation I've made is that (when I bump into this C-state bug), the time loss is almost always 299s. So it looks like occasionally it gets into a C-state and stays stuck there for 5 minutes. An interesting consequence is that a cron job that readjusts the time every minute is not sufficient, especially it won't prevent the watchdog from rebooting the machine (since 5min > 255s, as I have discovered after enabling the watchdog).
Re: My Fit-PC2 can't keep the time
Posted: Mon Oct 01, 2012 4:43 pm
by Golfy
From my part, WinXP on Fit-PC was running fine since 2010 to now...
... today, even after many restart, windows clock is too fast (around 1s each 5).
I don't understand why there is no BIOS update or patch for this problem
Edit:
I've found two help :
1) ClockMon tools is a program that synchronize windows clock with RTC clock (
http://www.softdevlabs.com/ClockMon/ClockMon.html)
2) Someone at answers.yahoo.com (
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index ... 006AAMzPcY) has wrote this :
1. Start->Run cmd.exe
2. net stop w32time
3. w32tm.exe /unregister
4. w32tm.exe /register
5. net start w32time
Re: My Fit-PC2 can't keep the time
Posted: Sat Mar 09, 2013 12:40 am
by equitius
I have the same issue
I use my fitpc for astronomy and I need a very accurate clock. With ClockMon I can sync it every minute but that still leaves me up to 5 seconds out at any time which presents problems.
I have tried the register/unregister routine suggested to no avail.
Surely there is some other fix??
Pete
Re: My Fit-PC2 can't keep the time
Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2013 7:05 pm
by gabrielh
Have you tried the solution advised in the first post on
that topic?
Re: My Fit-PC2 can't keep the time
Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2013 9:38 pm
by equitius
I've not been able to check the Bios as I run my fit remotely using VNC ie no monitor or keyboard.
I will check the status this week sometime.
I do find it odd that this has started only recently. I have read that the CMOS battery may be the culprit though the RTC looks like it keeps very regular time. Can you shed any light on this?
Pete