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From: peter@pa3ebv.nl.mugnet.org (Peter J. de Vrijer)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: System- and realtimeclock
Message-ID: <91021186@pa3ebv.nl.mugnet.org>
Date: 11 Feb 91 20:53:05 GMT
Lines: 29

Hello folks,

Sometime ago I noticed that the MINIX systemclock went ahead of the
realtimeclock of my PC-AT about two minutes each day. I had no real
problem with this since my computer is off most of the time during
the day. I use MINIX mostly in the evening and during the night for
automatic uucp polling. But for people who keep MINIX up all the time
this can become a problem. The solution I came up with is a reallys 
simple one. Just let cron execute the command '/bin/date -h' once
a day (say at midnight). This can be done with the following
entry in crontab:

0  0  *  *  *  /bin/date -h >/dev/null		# check system clock once a day

I don't know if 'date' will run on every computer (I think it is readclock 
for an XT. But every machine with a realtimeclock will have an equivalent
command (or should have) :-)

This simple solution will keep you from being ahead of time (which is bad)
or being quite slow (which is worse) :-)

Regards from Peter.


Peter J. de Vrijer           |  UUCP: peter@pa3ebv.nl.mugnet.org
Tel: +31 38 660735           |  packet radio: peter@pa3ebv.ampr.org 
Ministerlaan 9               |
8014 PL Zwolle               |  "And yet I'm happy,
The Netherlands              |   I can't figure it out."     Snoopy