[gentoo-user] Re: System won't boot if CMOS clock is slow

[Grant Edwards]

On 2013-01-16, Bruce Hill <daddy@×××××××××××××××××××××.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 04:43:16PM +0000, Grant Edwards wrote:
>> I'm having problems with one of my Gentoo systems who's motherboard
>> clock is a little slow.  When the system comes up, the system time is
>> set from the motherboard clock.  If that's slow, something in the init
>> system seems to panic because some file or other has a timestamp in
>> the future.
>>
>> Just to make it extra convenient, it clears the console screen when
>> that happens so there's no actual record of what went wrong or which
>> component in th init process is failing.
>>
>> Going into the BIOS setup and setting the time ahead a minute or two
>> will allow the system to start up normally.
>>
>> Is there any way to disable this "feature"?
>
> Replace your CMOS battery.

I'll try that.

I enabled init logging and did more testing, and I now don't think
it's actually the motherboard clock that's causing the problem. It
seems that a second reboot without changing the clock usually fixes
the problem also.

I have had systems in the past who refused to boot because the
motherboard time was off, and at first it looked like that was the
problem again.

> Default behavior of agetty is to clear now. In /etc/inittab make sure you have
> --noclear in tty1 like this:

Yup, figured that one out once I realized that in the normal case it's
agetty rather than the init system itself that clears the screen.

But, in the failures I've been seeing today, it's not getting to
agetty. The "clear screen and halt" happens at the "waiting for udev
events" step...

-- 
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