From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Nov 18 08:34:10 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: stable@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5C42116A41F for ; Fri, 18 Nov 2005 08:34:10 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from gemini@geminix.org) Received: from gen129.n001.c02.escapebox.net (gen129.n001.c02.escapebox.net [213.73.91.129]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EB45B4400F for ; Fri, 18 Nov 2005 08:34:09 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from gemini@geminix.org) Message-ID: <437D91FD.8050809@geminix.org> Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 09:34:05 +0100 From: Uwe Doering Organization: Private UNIX Site User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20051117 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Charles Sprickman References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Received: from gemini by geminix.org with esmtpsa (TLSv1:AES256-SHA:256) (Exim 4.54 (FreeBSD)) id 1Ed1h9-0009gU-A5; Fri, 18 Nov 2005 09:34:07 +0100 Cc: stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: 4.8 "alternate system clock has died" error X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 08:34:10 -0000 Charles Sprickman wrote: > Hello all, > > I've been digging through Google for more information on this. I have a > 4.8 box that's been up for about 430 days. In the last week or so, top > and ps have started reporting all CPU usage numbers as zero, and running > "systat -vmstat" results in the message "The alternate system clock has > died! Reverting to ``pigs'' display". > > I've found instances of this message in the archives for some 3.x users, > some pre 4.8 users and some 5.3 users. > > There were a number of suggestions including a patch if pre-4.8, sending > init a HUP, and setting the following sysctl mib: > "kern.timecounter.method: 1". > > I'm already at 4.8-p24, so I did not look into patching anything, and > HUP'ing init and setting the sysctl mib does not seem to have any effect. > > I'm not quite ready to believe that some hardware has actually failed. > Perhaps due to the long uptime something has rolled over? We had this once at work, quite a while ago. The "alternate system clock" is in fact the Real Time Clock (RTC) on the mainboard. In our case we were lucky in that it was just the quartz device that failed due to an improperly soldered lead which finally came off. We fixed the soldering and the problem was gone. Now, there are of course plenty of other hardware reasons why the RTC can fail, even temporarily like in your case. Perhaps it is really time for a new mainboard. Uwe -- Uwe Doering | EscapeBox - Managed On-Demand UNIX Servers gemini@geminix.org | http://www.escapebox.net