I''ve recently installed Mandrake 8.2 on a PC of mine here, with a 2.4.18 kernel (from the kernel.org sources, not the Mandrake supplied sources). I''m using IceWM, and the clock which is displayed at the end of the taskbar is nearly always innacurate just a short time after setting the correct date and time. It''ll be accurate for several hours, but after that it''ll be off by several hours and eventually by several days. This didn''t happen before when I was using Caldera Linux 3.1. What could cause the clock to become off like this? I manually reset the time and date via the KDE kcontrol app, but then it fails to stay accurate. By the next day it''s off again. What can I do to solve this problem?

You don''t have any power cycles or reboots hiding in that story, do you?

Linux keeps a separate timer from the hardware clock, IIRC. If your hardware clock is inaccruate or just plain not updated, you''ll see problems like that. But only after rebooting or reading from the hardware clock.

I had a PC with this problem for a while. It tended to end up a few mintues fast after I booted it every morning. I eventually ''solved'' it by running netdate at boot time.

Thanks for answering.

No, I always shut down with a "shutdown -h now". I''ve read about improper shutdowns causing such problems, so I set the clock properly about a week ago after booting up, and even after several days uptime it still became inaccurate (as no power outages had happened, or at least not long enough to exhast my battery backup).

I''ve tried setting the time and date via the BIOS, but I still ran into the same problem. I''d been running Caldera OpenLinux 3.1 for several months on this same computer without running into such problems. The clock accuracy problem only seems to have started after installing Mandrake 8.2. Perhaps it is a problem with the hardware, but I''d sort of doubt that.

Hmm, I''ll try looking for netdate. Would ntpdate function in a similar fashion?

Yes, ntpdate is another program that does the same thing.