Re: setting the system clock before launching operating system

[Daniel Kahn Gillmor]

On Sat 2008-09-13 00:52:47 -0400, Arthur Marsh wrote:

> Vesa Jääskeläinen wrote, on 2008-09-13 00:13:
>> Geoff Karl wrote:
>>> I would like to be able to set the clock to a particular time
>>> automatically before launching an operating system.
>>>
>>> Anyone have any ideas if this can be done during the boot loader process?
>>
>> Yes it can be done. But why?
>
> Some machines (e.g. a Compaq Armada 1750) don't have the option to set
> the time via BIOS or set-up boot floppy.
>
> When the time had been lost, I'd have start-up problems with fsck
> checking when the file system had last been checked.

The same is true for many older PowerPC machines whose mainboard
batteries have begun to fail.  Being able to automate the bootloader
to say "look, if the hardware clock thinks it is 1904 (or 1900, or
1970, or anytime before the turn of the century) it is probably wrong;
set it to at least 2008" at every boot would be pretty useful.

This is especially useful on 32-bit architectures with a default
hardware epoch date so far in the past that crappier NTP
implementations think that it's actually in the future.  I've dealt
with this at the OS level (for various OSes) on older PowerPC
machines, and it's doable, but a pain.  Being able to guarantee that
no matter what OS you're booting, the initial clock will be at least
set to time X would be pretty handy.

    --dkg

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