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Linux seems to be changing my BIOS clock

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Just_An_Engineer   03-04-2009 at 02:39:21 AM

I recently decided that it was about time for me to get around to learning how to use Linux so I installed Ubuntu 8.10 on an extra harddrive in the new rig I built just after Christmas. Everything is working fine but I have noticed that whenever I boot to my Linux drive I discover that the system clock in BIOS has been set ahead by 5 hours. This is somewhat puzzling to me as the correct time is shown in Ubuntu when I am booted up so I don't see a reason why the BIOS clock should be getting set ahead.

It's not really that big of a deal as I just need to remember to change it back before booting to my windows drive, but I am curious as to what might be causing this. Does anyone have any ideas?

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concorde   03-04-2009 at 03:07:36 AM
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Does it do this in Windows?

What I would probably do is take the BIOS battery out and leave it out for a minute or so, and then put it back in. I think there is a small discrepancy that probably a cut in power (removing the battery) would fix. Since you mentioned you built it last Christmas, I imagine it might be under warranty, so give them a call and talk to them if you can't resolve this.

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Just_An_Engineer   03-04-2009 at 04:09:38 AM
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concorde wrote :

Does it do this in Windows?

What I would probably do is take the BIOS battery out and leave it out for a minute or so, and then put it back in. I think there is a small discrepancy that probably a cut in power (removing the battery) would fix. Since you mentioned you built it last Christmas, I imagine it might be under warranty, so give them a call and talk to them if you can't resolve this.



I actually built the system after this past Christmas so the motherboard is only two months old. I highly doubt that it is the battery as this problem only occurs after booting to the linux drive. If I boot to my windows drive and then restart and check the bios the time will not have changed, but if I boot to the linux drive and then restart and check the bios I always find that the clock has been moved ahead by exactly 5 hours. It's really strange. The only reason I even noticed it is that after booting into windows after a stint running linux I noticed that the time listed on the taskbar was wrong. I traced this back to the clock in bios and then eventually determined that it was being set ahead each time I boot into linux. The puzzler to me is that I have both linux and windows configured to show my time zone so there is no reason that I can see for the bios clock being reset.

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Bronze Linux badge linux_0   03-04-2009 at 08:20:28 AM
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This isn't a battery or BIOS problem, Ubuntu sets the clock to UTC / GMT by default.

Make a backup copy of /etc/default/rcS and then change UTC=yes to UTC=no.

Good luck :)

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Just_An_Engineer   03-05-2009 at 07:11:06 AM
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linux_0 wrote :

This isn't a battery or BIOS problem, Ubuntu sets the clock to UTC / GMT by default.

Make a backup copy of /etc/default/rcS and then change UTC=yes to UTC=no.

Good luck :)



That fixed my problem. Thanks for the advice!

I figured that it might be something like this since my timezone is UTC -5hrs.

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