Why does NetBSD always seem to lose more time the longer I leave it running?
The problem stems from the fact that Apple decided clock interrupts should have the lowest priority (they are usually the highest on UN*X systems). As a result, under a heavy interrupt load (like lots of serial activity), it tends to miss clock update interrupts, thus causing the machine to lose time. Apparently, this is also a problem under MacOS, but it doesn’t show up as severely as under NetBSD. However, Richard Todd (rmtodd@servalan.servalan.com) notes: The battery-backed-up clock that keeps time when the machine is off is considerably more accurate than the one that supplies clock interrupts. Every time you reboot, the kernel clock gets re-initialized from the battery-backed-up clock, so you get correct time. What can you do about this? If you are connected to the Internet, the best thing you can do is to run xntpd. As the Network Time Protocol (NTP) daemon, xntpd contacts Internet time servers and synchronizes you system clock with them. As of the 1.3 release, xntpd has been int
