Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!watmath!uunet!wuarchive!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!psuvax1!rutgers!mit-eddie!andante!ulysses!dptg!mtunb!jcm
From: jcm@mtunb.ATT.COM (was-John McMillan)
Newsgroups: unix-pc.general
Subject: Re: Unix Pc Date/time
Summary: Dead Battery; partial fix
Keywords: UNIX-PC, Date/Time, Battery
Message-ID: <1688@mtunb.ATT.COM>
Date: 30 Oct 89 14:29:27 GMT
References: <912@kcdev.UUCP>
Reply-To: jcm@mtunb.UUCP (was-John McMillan)
Organization: AT&T ISL Middletown NJ USA
Lines: 26

In article <912@kcdev.UUCP> obrien@kcdev.UUCP (John Obrien x4089) writes:
>
>I need some help.  My 7300 recently quit keeping date and time.
>That is, when I do a shutdown and bring it back up again it's 
>Jan 1, 12:01 all over again.  Is this related to any program
>malfunction or just a dead battery?  If it's the battery, how do 
> I change it?  I'm using 3.51.

It's the battery.  (I'm sure Lenny, Gil, Thad or someone else who's
archived the instructions can E-mail them to you.)

Note that the KERNEL would be happy to resume time from the
date of the last ROOTDEV update -- i.e., the time the machine was
last taken down.  The line 'date -' in /etc/rc overrides this.

_I_ view this as a design defect in date(1): 'date' can easily 
identify the clock battery's dead and that clock shouldn't be
used for updating the time.

If you know your battery's dead, I'd recommend commenting out that
'date -' line until you've replaced the battery.  When you forget
to set the date on boot, it is better to have your files sequentially
dated -- but a day or two off -- than to have them ridiculously
dated in mixed order.

john mcmillan	-- att!mtunb!jcm