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From: n0ano@wldrdg.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: Read the battery-backed-up clock on the PC/AT
Message-ID: <123@wldrdg.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 19-Mar-87 12:18:11 EST
Article-I.D.: wldrdg.123
Posted: Thu Mar 19 12:18:11 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 22-Mar-87 20:45:32 EST
References: <542388736.17456@minster.UUCP>
Distribution: world
Organization: Wildridge Consulting,  Boulder, CO
Lines: 29

In order to utilize the battery back-up clock on the PC/AT,
..!minster!martin (martin @ Department of Computer Science,
University of York, England suggests adding the following to the
/etc/rc file:

> 
> 	/usr/bin/date `/usr/bin/rddate`
> 

The concern I have with this is that the back-graves (``) are
implemented in the shell with a pipe and a pipe allocates a
new i-node.  If this command were executed before the current
file system had been checked problems could result.  Allocating
a new i-node in a corrupted file system is a bad thing to do.

Admittedly this problem is probably unlikely to occur under MINIX
since the root file system, the file system this command is most
likely to be running under, is in RAM and is by definition
uncorrupted.  Still, I think it would be better to have "rddate"
just do an "stime" system call and set the date directly.

Note that this discussion applies to UNIX System V.  I have not
been able to verify this under MINIX since Prentice-Hall has not
seen fit to release my copy of MINIX yet.  We will of course ignore
the fact that I paid them for MINIX two months ago.

Donald Dugger
Wildridge Consulting
..!nbires!onecom!wldrdg!n0ano