I agree with Andy's suggestion, not all BIOS's time are correct. In fact, in many industrial applications, CMOS batteries are banned and BIOS time is never set.
________________________________ From: Andy Cress [mailto:andy.cr...@us.kontron.com] Sent: Wednesday, March 02, 2011 11:39 AM To: Jon Bamber; Jarrod B Johnson Cc: ipmitool-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Ipmitool-devel] Setting SEL Time using a string Jon, Thanks, I didn't notice the now option. Using the RTC as the source seems messier to me. And BIOS would not know about NTP anyway. If you just added these two lines to either the ntp daemon config or to some init script, like rc.local, this should do it, regardless of what BIOS does. # ipmitool sel time set now # hwclock --systohc Andy From: Jon Bamber [mailto:jon_bam...@xyratex.com] Sent: Wednesday, March 02, 2011 11:21 AM To: Andy Cress; Jarrod B Johnson Cc: ipmitool-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: RE: [Ipmitool-devel] Setting SEL Time using a string Andy There is currently a feature that if you make the time string "now" it will take the system time which I guess is what you refer to a sync function. You should also set the config of the ntp time daemon to update the hwclock as well. In our implementation the BIOS sets the SEL on start-up from the hardware RTC which maybe at UTC or local time depending on OS setup and so would want it consistent with the hardware clock time which does not hold a time zone offset. So if UTC is used for the real clock time base then the "now" will then move the SEL time to the localtime. Perhaps we should have a "utc" option? A further complication is that the command may be called from across the LAN or even across time-zones but it in this case it would be up to the user to make the choice in how what value is required in this case. Cheers Jon From: Andy Cress [mailto:andy.cr...@us.kontron.com] Sent: 02 March 2011 14:58 To: Jarrod B Johnson; Jon Bamber Cc: ipmitool-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: RE: [Ipmitool-devel] Setting SEL Time using a string Auto-correcting the SEL time in the app makes it look right, but masks the underlying issue if there is a time delta. There are actually 3 times that need to be synchronized: 1) OS System time - can be managed with NTP 2) IPMI SEL time - can be set with SetSELTime command 3) HW RTC time - can by sync'd with 'hwclock' IMO, setting either 2 or 3 manually isn't the best approach, because it will almost always be off by a few seconds, or however long it takes to enter the next command. I have created my own program to sync 2 and 3 with the OS System Time, which, if NTP is used, should keep it accurate. However, setting the SEL time should be done sparingly, since IPMI firmware often doesn't react well to having its clock set backward, especially if some event or activity is in progress. Once per day should be enough, IMO. My recommendation for a general solution would be to add a 'sync' function, like: 'ipmitool sel time sync'. Andy From: Jarrod B Johnson [mailto:jbjoh...@us.ibm.com] Sent: Tuesday, March 01, 2011 7:46 AM To: Jon Bamber Cc: ipmitool-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Ipmitool-devel] Setting SEL Time using a string Speaking of SEL time, ipmitool may want to consider an approach like I implemented in xCAT. Frequently BMC time is wrong (either not set at all due to negligence or synced on POST to system hardware clock which might ambiguously be UTC or localtime depending on OS and config). Therefore, when I go to read SEL and report time, I first query the current time and calculate the difference from client system's clock and BMC clock to apply as a corrective factor to all SEL timestamps. I never notice an incorrect BMC clock after that. -----"Jon Bamber" <jon_bam...@xyratex.com><mailto:jon_bam...@xyratex.com> wrote: ----- To: <ipmitool-devel@lists.sourceforge.net><mailto:ipmitool-devel@lists.sourceforge.net> From: "Jon Bamber" <jon_bam...@xyratex.com><mailto:jon_bam...@xyratex.com> Date: 03/01/2011 05:31AM Subject: [Ipmitool-devel] Setting SEL Time using a string Hi There appears to be a bug in setting the BMC SEL time with a string in that it sets the time one hour before the string provided. e.g. ipmitool sel time set "02/21/2011 10:12:34" 02/21/2011 9:12:34 I believe the cause is that struct tm is unitialised and so the daylight saving flag appears to be set so mktime reduces the time by one hour. Placing on line 1889 before mktime() in ipmi_sel_set_time of ipmi_sel.c tm.tm_isdst = 0; seems to cure this problem. ipmitool sel time set "02/21/2011 10:12:34" 02/21/2011 10:12:34 Cheers Jon ______________________________________________________________________ This email may contain privileged or confidential information, which should only be used for the purpose for which it was sent by Xyratex. No further rights or licenses are granted to use such information. If you are not the intended recipient of this message, please notify the sender by return and delete it. You may not use, copy, disclose or rely on the information contained in it. Internet email is susceptible to data corruption, interception and unauthorised amendment for which Xyratex does not accept liability. 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