Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!uunet!cbmvax!ditto From: ditto@cbmvax.UUCP (Michael "Ford" Ditto) Newsgroups: unix-pc.bugs Subject: Re: STIME April 20 on ps Summary: Unix uses superblock update time until hardware clock is read. Keywords: ps bootup time Message-ID: <4786@cbmvax.UUCP> Date: 21 Sep 88 06:29:03 GMT References: <369@limbic.UUCP> Reply-To: ditto@cbmvax.UUCP (Michael "Ford" Ditto) Distribution: unix-pc Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA Lines: 23 In article <369@limbic.UUCP> gil@limbic.UUCP (Gil Kloepfer Jr.) writes: >Has anyone else experienced this phenomena? > Could this be >taking the time from a software R/T clock which hasn't been set yet until >the hardware R/T clock is copied to the software one during some phase of >the boot process? When Unix boots, it uses the update time of the superblock of the root filesystem to set its clock. This is usually whatever time that disk was last written to (usually just before the system went down). On the Unix PC the hardware time-of-day clock is set by /etc/rc, so any processes created before that point will have incorrect STIMEs. The most annoying problem I have with this is that the boot time in /etc/utmp is wrong, causing the "uptime" to be off by however long your system was turned off. -- -=] Ford [=- . . (In Real Life: Mike Ditto) . : , ford@kenobi.cts.com This space under construction, ...!ucsd!elgar!ford pardon our dust. ditto@cbmvax.commodore.com