[CentOS] System Time

Sun Mar 8 17:59:16 UTC 2020
Chris Olson <chris_e_olson at yahoo.com>

A few years ago, one of our interns was curious about system
time keeping features in computer systems.  This intern was
also the proud owner of an inexpensive Radio-Controlled Clock.
The intern wondered why computer motherboards were not just
equipped with a chip like the ones in the RCC so that their
system time would always be correct.

I posted a question about this on the CentOS email list and
received more responses than those postings about problems
with the new Firefox release.  I must have really struck a
very sensitive system time nerve.

This large response was a bit of a surprise and included a
bunch of time related horror stories.  It became clear why
using an RCC chip on motherboards would NOT be a good idea.
GPS network time servers seemed to be a preferred choice.

All of our bedrooms have Radio-Controlled Clocks. At 5:30
this morning, half of the clocks displayed the correct time.
The other half of the clocks were incorrectly showing a time
one hour ahead. Maybe this is one more piece of evidence to
reject using an RCC time base for computers, at lease in thestate of Arizona.