SUMMARY: set date

From: Willig Reimund <Willig.Reimund_at_gdr.de>
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 15:35:48 +0200

Hallo to all who answered me,
special thanks to Girish Phadke and to Doc Blinn, who gave the most
meaningfull answer. For a better understanding, i'll just attach what
the doctor ordered =;-)

originale Q:
> why is it necessary to set the systems date in single user mode and why
> do i have to write down the timestamp into the disks superblocks via
> "mount -u /"?


solution:
> You can set the date in multiuser mode, but there is a real likelihood that
> some or many of the applications that may be already running will be very
> confused by having the date change, especially if you set it backward. It
> is the nature of applications that run at multiuser level that they assume
> that, for example, the passage of time will be at a constant (or nearly so)
> rate and that the value that represents time will be monotone increasing.

> As for "mount -u /", if you change the date manually, but haven't yet done
> the mount of the root file system read-write (which is what that command is
> doing), then during the transition from single-user to multi-user mode, a
> check is made against the "last shutdown time" in the root disk (written as
> the root file system is dismounted on shutdown), and that check could cause
> the system software to conclude that the new date you entered is invalid and
> reset it to the last shutdown time (since normally the date/time is taken
> out of the TOY clock on the motherboard, but sometimes the TOY clock fails,
> so there are a whole raft of sanity checks that sometimes don't do what you
> really want).




mit freundlichen Grüßen
     Reimund Willig
willig.reimund_at_gdr.de
Received on Tue Jul 28 1998 - 13:37:50 NZST

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