[SOLVED] wrong Time wrong Time synchronisation

[maxprox]

Hi,
first of all, many thanks to the Proxmox support, without the help from Mr. Stoiko Ivanov, I 'd never find this solution!
In short:
I went to the BIOS (Supermicro X11SCM-F) ACPI Settings - High Precision Event Timer (HPET), and switched it from enabled (default) to disable...
and everything was good:
The times are perfect:

root@suziprox ~ # hwclock -r && date && rdate -4npuv ptbtime2.ptb.de
2019-06-19 19:03:49.464091+0200
Wed Jun 19 19:03:50 CEST 2019
Wed Jun 19 19:03:50 CEST 2019
rdate: adjust local clock by 0.000521 seconds

and without any other change the NTP synchronized: went from "no" to "yes"

root@suziprox ~ # timedatectl status
      Local time: Wed 2019-06-19 19:14:15 CEST
  Universal time: Wed 2019-06-19 17:14:15 UTC
        RTC time: Wed 2019-06-19 17:14:15
       Time zone: Europe/Berlin (CEST, +0200)
 Network time on: yes
NTP synchronized: yes
 RTC in local TZ: no
root@suziprox ~ #

Alternatively I tried -without the BIOS settings- described in this answer post from Nicola Ben:
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/377621/clock-instability-in-debian-9-stretch
the following GRUB settings

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet notsc clocksource=acpi_pm"
update-grub
reboot

It has the same effect, it is an alternative solution. I work with the BIOS settings above.

(At the same time I asked the Supermicro Support, when I told from Linux they said it is an OS problem...)

regards
maxprox

 

[maxprox]

Hi,
...
Also as @udo suggested - try changing the BIOS settings affecting the CPU-clock scale-down (usually found in the BIOS either at CPU-settings or PowerSaving Settings) - https://www.supermicro.com/support/faqs/faq.cfm?faq=21555
Hope this helps!

Hi Stoiko,
this settings I do not found in the BIOS of the X11SCM-F
But as you see above, with your help, the problem is solved,
Thank you!

Has anybody one Tip for me: how to find an overview and the meaning of all the Supermicro Server Boards BIOS features and it settings, in connection with Linux would be perfect.

regards,
maxprox

 

[Stoiko Ivanov]

Glad the issue got resolved!

Has anybody one Tip for me: how to find an overview and the meaning of all the Supermicro Server Boards BIOS features and it settings, in connection with Linux would be perfect.

For the greatest part my strategy until now was - to leave most things at their defaults, unless there's a good reason to change them (enabling virtualization for a hypervisor for example, or putting the PXE boot option further to the back, instead of waiting for timeouts of dhcp-discovery on every boot).

For Supermicro Systems, the Thomas-Krenn wiki is also a nice starting point - e.g. https://www.thomas-krenn.com/en/wiki/BIOS_Settings (and the linked articles), however usually the number of available BIOS/Firmware settings (and sadly also the naming of existing settings) do change quite a bit from generation to generation, board to board, and sometimes from BIOS version to BIOS version...

If a problem arises which could be linked to BIOS-settings - the strategy of reading through the output of `dmesg` and pasting relevant lines into google (along with the system-model) - has worked quite well for me.

 

[jusmax]

I know this is an old thread, but I must commend and thank you both on working on this and finding a solution. This fixed my issue after a weekend of NTP configurations and changes and subsequent re-installation of the entire cluster. I disabled HPET on all three Supermicro Servers and the clock skew issue is now fixed. Thanks again!

 

[Proxygen]

I know this is an old thread, but I must commend and thank you both on working on this and finding a solution. This fixed my issue after a weekend of NTP configurations and changes and subsequent re-installation of the entire cluster. I disabled HPET on all three Supermicro Servers and the clock skew issue is now fixed. Thanks again!

Which clocksource are you using now? TSC?

 

[Proxygen]

Hi,
first of all, many thanks to the Proxmox support, without the help from Mr. Stoiko Ivanov, I 'd never find this solution!
In short:
I went to the BIOS (Supermicro X11SCM-F) ACPI Settings - High Precision Event Timer (HPET), and switched it from enabled (default) to disable...
and everything was good:
The times are perfect:

root@suziprox ~ # hwclock -r && date && rdate -4npuv ptbtime2.ptb.de
2019-06-19 19:03:49.464091+0200
Wed Jun 19 19:03:50 CEST 2019
Wed Jun 19 19:03:50 CEST 2019
rdate: adjust local clock by 0.000521 seconds

and without any other change the NTP synchronized: went from "no" to "yes"

root@suziprox ~ # timedatectl status
      Local time: Wed 2019-06-19 19:14:15 CEST
  Universal time: Wed 2019-06-19 17:14:15 UTC
        RTC time: Wed 2019-06-19 17:14:15
       Time zone: Europe/Berlin (CEST, +0200)
Network time on: yes
NTP synchronized: yes
RTC in local TZ: no
root@suziprox ~ #

Alternatively I tried -without the BIOS settings- described in this answer post from Nicola Ben:
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/377621/clock-instability-in-debian-9-stretch
the following GRUB settings

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet notsc clocksource=acpi_pm"
update-grub
reboot

It has the same effect, it is an alternative solution. I work with the BIOS settings above.

(At the same time I asked the Supermicro Support, when I told from Linux they said it is an OS problem...)

regards
maxprox

Supermicro also told me it is an OS problem. But it only happens on SuperMicro hardware. right...

 

[sevenman]

How I get the correct time?
I'm a noob in Linux really. so I don't understand all these codes.
I use wincsp to access 'timesyncd.conf'
after that, I move my time zone to UTC and I get what I need.

Thanks!!