[OpenIndiana-discuss] December 27th 1986

[Sašo Kiselkov]

On 01/19/2013 05:37 PM, Jan Owoc wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I have a home NAS that I'm running on an Asus E35M1-I (AMD E-350)
> motherboard. When I do a shutdown using "init 5", and then physically
> walk over to power it on (without ever unplugging the power),
> sometimes the system powers up with the date set to December 27th
> 1986. I have ntp installed, so I get the right time a few minutes
> after boot, but in the meantime a handful of timestamps are created,
> eg. uptime:
>  09:31am  up 9519 days 16:31,  1 user,  load average: 0.19, 0.36, 0.23
> 
> It happens every 3-4 power cycles, and has been happening
> intermittently (I reboot maybe once every few months) since I
> installed the system about a year ago as oi151a. Currently running
> oi_151a7.
> 
> Has anyone seen this before (and what is the significance of 1986)?
> Any suggested "quick fixes" that are unlikely to break anything else
> (I'm happy with the system otherwise)?

Your BIOS battery may be failing. While the system is powered off
(regardless if it is plugged in or not), time is kept in the on-board
real-time clock. Failure to retain time indicates that there's a problem
there. Try getting a new one - it's typically a little watch-sized
battery that can be bought at the hardware store.

Also, I suggest using "poweroff" rather than "init 5" to power the
machine off. Ever since switching to SMF in Solaris Nevada, runlevels no
longer really exist (but I undetstand that old habits die hard).

Cheers,
--
Saso