Possible Ultra 5 NVRAM/clock/battery problem

[Douglas Caviness]

I am posting to both hardware and software groups on the slim chance my
problem is not hardware.

I have two Ultra 5 boxes acting as ACE servers for SecureID for VPN access.
While diagnosing Legato (EMC) Networker backup issues I noticed that the
date command returned the correct date and time, but if I created a file the
date/time stamp was off by either a couple of days, or over 30 years (1975)
in the ACE log files. I did a warm boot and it seemed to clear up. I could
touch a file and it had the correct date/time stamp, but because the ACE
servers require times to be rather close between servers I am concerned.
What I have not done is a power cycle, which I am not going to do until I
document the contents of NVRAM. Just in case.

My first thought was NVRAM/clock/battery, and I have been pricing
replacement chips at various vendors. But because the warm boot seems to
have made a difference I wanted to ask if anyone has ever seen a similar
problem that was not NVRAM/clock/battery related? NTP is not the issue as
these boxes are on a DMZ and I have asked several times to allow NTP packets
through the firewall, with no success. Or even a response. Sigh.

I am not sure that the warm boot really had an effect, or what will happen
if I power the machine off. During the warm boot the MAC address was OK, and
everything else seemed to be correct.

Thanks in advance.

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Douglas Caviness

[Douglas Caviness]

...

I brought the system down and at the OpenBoot prompt ran "watch-clock" and
stared sadly at the screen while the clock tick count sat at 40. Fortunately
I had another Ultra 5 so I just swapped boot disks and all is well. After I
powered down the problem machine I never did get it to power on again, and
the fan was making distinctly un-fan like noises so it was for the best.