[clug] hwclock hanging waiting for clock tick

[Andrew Smith]

Hi all,

I have a cool/interesting problem I'm trying to resolve.  This Redhat
7.3 system had a power "event" early this week (either
surge/failure/angry user).  Since then hwclock must be used with
--directisa or commented out of rc.sysinit and init.d/halt to allow the
system to start and stop.

As you can see from below, hwclock waits forever for a clock tick,
unless direct I/O is used.  I guess this points to a /dev/rtc issue, so
I've re-created /dev/rtc.  Output from /proc/driver/rtc looks normal
(below).

At first I thought the hardware clock had stopped ticking, but
successive reads with --directisa show it's changing.

Any thoughts?  I could just add --directisa but I'd like to know if it's
a hardware issue and if I should banging my head against Dell instead.

Thanks
Andrew

[root at balx1gw root]# hwclock --debug
hwclock 2.4c/util-linux-2.11n
Using /dev/rtc interface to clock.
Last drift adjustment done at 0 seconds after 1969
Last calibration done at 0 seconds after 1969
Hardware clock is on local time
Assuming hardware clock is kept in local time.
Waiting for clock tick...


[root at balx1gw root]# hwclock --debug --directisa
hwclock 2.4c/util-linux-2.11n
Using direct I/O instructions to ISA clock.
Last drift adjustment done at 0 seconds after 1969
Last calibration done at 0 seconds after 1969
Hardware clock is on local time
Assuming hardware clock is kept in local time.
Waiting for clock tick...
...got clock tick
Time read from Hardware Clock: 2004/12/08 11:10:46
Hw clock time : 2004/12/08 11:10:46 = 1102464646 seconds since 1969
Wed 08 Dec 2004 11:10:46 EST  0.997679 seconds

[root at balx1gw root]# cat /proc/driver/rtc
rtc_time        : 11:25:40
rtc_date        : 2004-12-08
rtc_epoch       : 1900
alarm           : 00:00:00
DST_enable      : no
BCD             : yes
24hr            : yes
square_wave     : no
alarm_IRQ       : no
update_IRQ      : no
periodic_IRQ    : no
periodic_freq   : 1024
batt_status     : okay
[root at balx1gw root]#

[root at balx1gw root]# ls -l /dev/rtc
crw-r--r--    1 root     root      10, 135 Nov 30 14:04 /dev/rtc