[ILUG] Setting RTC

[Guest, Ken]

# From: Niall O Broin [mailto:nobroin at sced.esoc.esa.de]
# Sent: Thursday, April 29, 1999 04:30 PM
# To: ilug at linux.ie
# Subject: [ILUG] Setting RTC
# 
# I have a Toshiba 4900CT notebook - 75MHz Pentium so of course totally
# obsolete as far as Windows users are concerned, but it's running Linux
# just fine with 40M of RAM and a 2GB disk so I'm a happy pig, 
# particularly
# as I paid less than 300 quid S/H for it. However, I'm now 
# trying to set
# the time/date on the RTC. The BIOS setup screen doesn't offer 
# any means of
# doing this, but it can be done by booting from a DOS floppy 
# and using the
# date command. However, I won't always have that DOS floppy 
# handy, so I'm
# wondering if there is any way of changing the RTC date/time 
# from Linux ?
# 
# Reading  Documentation/rtc.txt  I came across this
# 
# Also, if the kernel time is synchronized with an external source, the 
# kernel will write the time back to the CMOS clock every 11 
# minutes. In 
# the process of doing this, the kernel briefly turns off RTC periodic 
# interrupts, so be aware of this if you are doing serious work. If you
# don't synchronize the kernel time with an external source (via ntp or
# whatever) then the kernel will keep its hands off the RTC, 
# allowing you
# exclusive access to the device for your applications.
# 
# but it seems that simply changing the date/time by the date 
# command doesn't
# count - I did that, waited somewhat more than 11 minutes, 
# rebooted, and
# my date change was obliterated.
# 

Were you doing this as root?
I remember, waay back in Limerick, trying to do this [well, something
similar] on the company proxy. Needless to say I wasn't logged in as
root and each time the flaky piece of machine rebooted the date change
that I put in was lost.

Ken