Most armv7 boards lack a battery to maintain system time. On firstboot they come up a zero time. This results in the initial log files (and other key files) to have a zero date:
# ls /var/log/ -lst total 260 84 -rw-------. 1 root root 82722 Dec 19 21:45 messages 8 -rw-------. 1 root root 4889 Dec 18 16:27 secure 16 -rw-------. 1 root root 14517 Dec 18 16:01 cron 4 drwx------. 2 root root 4096 Dec 18 00:38 httpd 24 -rw-------. 1 root root 19279 Dec 18 00:37 yum.log 0 -rw-------. 1 root root 0 Dec 3 09:07 spooler 0 -rw-------. 1 root root 0 Dec 3 09:05 tallylog 4 drwx------. 2 root root 4096 May 28 2015 ppp 4 -rw-------. 1 root utmp 1152 Dec 31 1969 btmp 16 -rw-rw-r--. 1 root utmp 13824 Dec 31 1969 wtmp 4 -rw-------. 1 root root 200 Dec 31 1969 maillog 28 -rw-r--r--. 1 root root 292292 Dec 31 1969 lastlog 4 drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 4096 Dec 31 1969 tuned 4 -rw-r--r--. 1 root root 120 Dec 31 1969 wpa_supplicant.log 4 drwxr-x---. 2 root root 4096 Dec 31 1969 audit 8 -rw-r--r--. 1 root root 8180 Dec 31 1969 boot.log 24 -rw-r--r--. 1 root root 23322 Dec 31 1969 dmesg 24 -rw-r--r--. 1 root root 23322 Dec 31 1969 dmesg.old
Logwatch will have problems with these files (or that has been my prior experience). I suspect other services will have problems with such 'old' files on the system.
First we need to select the time management service: ntp or timesync (I think I got this service naed correctly)?
Fedora is using timesync and gets the current proper time from the network shortly after bootup. But there are some problems with this that are not so much an issue for a desktop, but are for a server.
The firstboot timestamping problem I show above still occurs. Fedora has a later version of timesync that has this function. The version in Centos7 does not. What happens when a server restarts after a power outage, but before the external network access is available? For some time the system runs with time zero+.
Here is what I am thinking as the way to address this:
The time services have the ability to read a file for a date hint if the date is less than some set time, or that is what I understand. So add to the centos-arm-installer script (to be made for the fedora-arm-installer script) a set to get the date from the installing system and pushing it into the proper place of the centos7-arm image.
Now at first boot, the system SHOULD come up with this date which is at least a good start that will tend to not be too stale.
Next this date file should be updated through some automatic process so in the event that a system is turned off then reboots, it comes up with a rather good start time.
I don't know what would be a good way to do this on Centos7. I can search back in my various discussions on this subject on a couple of lists. But there are people here that I hope are better able to make the design decisions needed so that our Centos7-armv7 systems have good time.