On Thu, 7 Jan 1999 00:46:52 +0100 (CET)  Magni Onsoien wrote:

> My DECStation 5000/25 is running NetBSD 1.3.2.
> 
> This morning it suddenly crashed. When it was on its way up, there was
> some '?RTC' above the boot prompt, but no errors when typing boot. It came
> up, but during boot it suddenly told me that its clock had lost 736 days
> (WARNING: Clock has lost 736 days) - the usual message used to be that it
> has gained some days. After the usual boot-things like fsck, network setup
> etc it is supposed to run a ntpdate against the usual ntp-server, and so
> it does. It then displays that it has adjusted the time by 63574248.856601
> sec. Then it just stands there for ~15 minutes, with the ntp-message as
> the last message. Then the boot continues in the normal way.
> 
> When booting in single user 'date' says Jan 1 1997...
> 
> A friend of mine (the Cc of this mail is for her) with exactly the same
> computer is experiencing the same problem.
> 
> Anyone got any ideas?

This is a problem with the DEC RTC only having 2 years of precision (I
think - the brain is still in holiday mode!).  If you installed NetBSD
1.3.3, it has a fix for the problem.  Note you can just install a 1.3.3
kernel if that's easier, and leave your userland at 1.3.2.

My memory is fuzzy, but this may also be fixed "properly" in -current.

Simon.