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Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2008 00:22:03 +1100 (EST)
From: Ian Smith <smithi@nimnet.asn.au>
To: Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de>
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Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org, geseeker@yahoo.com
Subject: Re: odd problem, system clock stops while power-down
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On Tue, 28 Oct 2008 12:46:58 +0100 Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de> wrote:
 > On Tue, 28 Oct 2008 03:17:39 -0700 (PDT), Richard Smith <geseeker@yahoo.com> wrote:
 > > How do i get around this so i wouldn't have to set the clock every
 > > time i boot into freebsd? and by the way, does freebsd use the
 > > CMOS clock?
 > 
 > An idea would to use NTP to get the exact time from your
 > local atomic time dealer at system startup. :-)
 > 
 > See ntpd and ntpdate for further information.

Definitely the best advice.  However it doesn't explain why his system 
apparently fails to retrieve the current date & time from CMOS on boot.

Mine always have, though CMOS clocks rarely keep good time, so using NTP 
after network connection after boot I see initial corrections of several 
seconds usually .. still it's better than having all your log timestamps 
screwed after reboot until NTP does its thing.

Richard: are you running UTC or local time in CMOS?  If the latter, does 
the file /etc/wall_cmos_clock exist?

cheers, Ian