Package: util-linux Version: 2.15.1~rc1-1 Severity: normal Linux 2.6.17 and newer (since git commit 0c86edc0d4970649f39748c4ce4f2895f728468f) support copying the hardware clock to the system clock themselves; furthermore, Linux does a better job of it, by not introducing a long delay to wait for a once-per-second RTC boundary, and by running when resuming from a low-power state. Debian's kernels have this option turned on since 2.6.26-2, which includes the lenny kernel. Thus, hwclock no longer needs to run at boot time.
Note that the in-kernel support assumes that the RTC holds UTC; however, in the event that it does not, some early init script simply needs to call settimeofday to set the time zone. Removing the boot-time invocation of hwclock would significantly speed up the boot process. On my system, the two invocations of hwclock take more than a second to run, and the entire boot process only takes about 6 seconds; hwclock represents the single largest delay in the boot process. The kernel does not support the reverse operation, writing the system time to the hardware clock; thus, as long as this operation continues to seem useful, hwclock still needs to run at shutdown time. - Josh Triplett -- System Information: Debian Release: squeeze/sid APT prefers unstable APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Kernel: Linux 2.6.30-1-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash Versions of packages util-linux depends on: ii libc6 2.9-21 GNU C Library: Shared libraries ii libncurses5 5.7+20090613-1 shared libraries for terminal hand ii libselinux1 2.0.82-1 SELinux shared libraries ii libslang2 2.1.4-3 The S-Lang programming library - r ii libuuid1 1.41.8-2 Universally Unique ID library ii lsb-base 3.2-23 Linux Standard Base 3.2 init scrip ii tzdata 2009k-1 time zone and daylight-saving time ii zlib1g 1:1.2.3.3.dfsg-14 compression library - runtime util-linux recommends no packages. Versions of packages util-linux suggests: ii dosfstools 3.0.4-1 utilities for making and checking ii kbd 1.15-2 Linux console font and keytable ut pn util-linux-locales <none> (no description available) -- no debconf information -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected]
