UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

It's entirely possible a cheap consumer-grade PC would have issues running a specialized UNIX server OS, but considering they sold that unusual configuration to you in the first place, that ought to be their problem, not yours. You're right, I wouldn't trust them to not take advantage of you again.

In a way they're not exactly wrong. It sounds like your OS is having troubles with the motherboard or CPU not agreeing with it on how long a clock cycle is. I'm not sure how to tweak that in SCO.

OK, let us start over.

We can spend all day commiserating about what a rip-off that (probably) was, but to get you any (constructive!) help on you need to describe your system better. Start with a high-level description of your system: what do you need the system for? What is its purpose? What are the "surroundings" (other systems depending on what the system does, etc.) like?

Maybe we can work out a suggestion on what you should do but we have to understand the problem first.

I hope this helps.

bakunin

Made a good part of my living over the years putting SCO on some of the cheapest hardware parts available after seeing how the suppliers were over specifying the hardware. Based on that experience I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that the hardware is the issue.

If it was a customer of mine I would install another hard drive on a Friday afternoon, reload the OS, then check the time on Monday morning to see if it was in fact a hardware issue. Then restore the system. But that also ignores a more basic question, is this a new thing or has it been going on for a while?

If the time loss is within a reasonable amount you could set a crontab to reboot the system at a reasonable hour (system time) before real time for the backup. That would get the RTC transferred in to insure the backup was done at close to the proper time. This assuming, of course, that the reboot wouldn't crash something else that hadn't been shut down properly.

Thank you bakunin, you are right.

As I can best describe, the system runs a program called Fuel server. TO me, it's a database that contains customer basic info and records of service calls, oil deliveries, and can run accounting reports. It is hooked up to a large printer for printing oil tickets, reports, etc.. The computer case has stickers for Windows XP.. But it boots up in Unix. That's about it.. It's has no gui, just hop around using numbers and tab, enter, etc...No Internet hookup, just a phone line we plug in when they need to access the system remotely. It's a dinosaur, but has been in place for a long time and works. Would love to upgrade to something else, but that's a different topic.

I was asking the company we work with about the database type (to attempt to import to another program) and they realized what I was going and stopped returning my calls.. I suppose that would be another question.. Seeing a way to find out what brand of database we are using..

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I jsut ran the cat /dev/rtc command and it showed me that the rtc was good, but the sys clock is losing time.

I faintly remember the adjtime system tool would cover exactly this, but I don't know if it's available on SCO.

Is there a way to have the sys clock update itself to the RTC time automatically , say like every couple minutes? SCO 5.05

Use the setclk command. setclock(ADM)In one post you mention 5.0.7, in another 5.0.5. Which is correct?
Step one would be to determine if the on board clock is maintaining the correct time, and if so, secondly write a script to maintain the time.