Hi. I have had this problem in various systems, some wich started with gentoo 2005.0, others 2006.0 The problem is the clock is always wrong, till i set only to use --noadjtime in /etc/init.d/clock or i delete /etc/adjtime. Then everything becomes normal. It's kind of a pain in the ass bug, especially when it happens on other systems that not mine, mine i can fix.
afaict, this is by design if something is putting crazy values into adjtime, then that thing is broken ... the fact that clock uses the values in there and your clock goes crazy is not a bug
So... what could do that. And why don't i need the file? in my system i edited the clock initscript so it doesn't use adjtime.
adjtime is used to handle clock sources that are not sane (which is not an uncommon event) see the "The Adjust Function" in the hwclock manpage
This seems to me something that shouldn't be done... Why? Maybe what's putting these values in adjtime is the KDE clock utility, as i usually have computers where i mess alot with the bios, i change the clock alot, but not in a normal way, i can adjust hours, days or even years. If that's the case, that's what has been giving me problems. Maybe the adjtime function should be limited to some minutes of maximum deviation, i had problems with it changing my clock sometimes a few hours, sometimes days. Best regards
there's no way to know what is a valid value in adjtime and what is not
