Sage clock is way off

[Keith]

I sync my PC to Sage's clock (default, I think).

Up till now it's worked great. Today it's off by several minutes according to NIST.

Anybody else having this problem?

[stevech]

I found that Windows XP by default synchs to NIST or whomever you've chosen once a day. The default as I recall is a server at Microsoft.

There's a registry entry to make it synch the PC clock more frequently. My PC's clock drifts a bit, esp. when doing CD/DVD work (I think Windows' drivers lose real time clock interrupts).

So I changed my registry entry to synch every few hours. The registry entry ID is google-able.

[ben_95sl1]

I've had the same problem as well...

if you don't do the reg setting, or if you have win2k which isn't built in AFAIK....I simply installed Dimension 4 (free for home) which lets you update the time as often as you want, like every minute, or 30min, etc. I then disabled the sagetv server time synch and its been absolutely perfect.

http://www.thinkman.com/dimension4/index.htm

[Keith]

I've used sage for maybe 4 or 5 months and never had the problem till last night. It fixed itself shortly after I posted this thread...but not until about 4 recordings were hosed. The day before it had been fine.

Thanks for posting the link, I'll look into Thinkman and Google for the registry setting. SuSE Linux has this built in too and is very reliable. I'm really spoiled on what I think should be free and built in...

I used to use something similar when I was using BeyondTV but every once in a while the date would all of a sudden be way in the future and all my manually scheduled recordings would have expired. I never did pin down the cause but it's one reason I ditched BeyondTV and bought Sage.

[jagee23]

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307897/EN-US/

Here is a knowledge base article from Microsoft on how to sync time using the windows time service. Since most people use a standalone box for Sage and it isnt joined to a domain you must manually configure the Time service. Here is a list of SNTP time servers available on the internet - http://support.microsoft.com/default...;EN-US;q262680

[Polypro]

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\Parameters


NtpServer : REG_SZ (optional)
NtpServer : REG_SZ (optional) Used to manually configure the time source. Set this to the DNS name or IP address of the NTP server to synchronize from. You can modify this from the command line by using the net time command. Value is blank by default

Note If you enter multiple NTP entries you must separate the entries with a space. For example, if you enter two different IP addresses for two distinct NTP servers, you must separate the entries with a space. Do not use a comma to separate multiple IP addresses or multiple fully qualified domain names (FQDNs).

Period : REG_DWORD or REG_SZ
Used to control how often the time service synchronizes. If a string value is specified, it must be one of special ones listed below. If you specify the string value by using the numbers (65535 for example), then create the value as a REG_DWORD. If you use the word to specify the string value (BiDaily for example), then the entry should be created as a REG_SZ.
0 = once a day
65535, "BiDaily" = once every 2 days
65534, "Tridaily" = once every 3 days
65533, "Weekly" = once every week (7 days)
65532, "SpecialSkew" = once every 45 minutes until 3 good synchronizations occur, then once every 8 hours (3 per day) [default]
65531, "DailySpecialSkew" = once every 45 minutes until 1 good synchronization occurs, then once every day
freq = freq times per day

[nielm]

Originally Posted by stevech

I found that Windows XP by default synchs to NIST or whomever you've chosen once a day. The default as I recall is a server at Microsoft.

and this server is very overloaded

Try changing it to an SNTP server that is more 'local' from the list in the MSDN article above (double-click the time in the taskbar, Internet Time tab).

[Wakecrash]

How reliable is Sage built in feature to update the clock? Sometimes I think mine might be off by a minute.

[Keith]

Originally Posted by Wakecrash

How reliable is Sage built in feature to update the clock? Sometimes I think mine might be off by a minute.

To check your accuracy just point your browser to http://nist.time.gov/

99.9% of the time for me it's within just a few seconds of NIST and the local cable company. Tonight for example there's less than one second of lag between Sage and NIST. Typically there's about 10 seconds difference between the cable company and NIST (according to my now "antique" VCR that I set to sync with the cable company).

I only had problems the one day when I posted this thread.

[Keith]

Spoke too soon - yesterday it was agin off by 2-3 minutes and had some recordings hosed again.

Took the easy way out and installed Dimension4.

[jbuszkie]

I use a utility called clockmon. It will periodically check the OS time against the RTC on the Motherbord. If it's off by more than x then it will reset the OS time. Before I used this utility, I was somtimes off by 30 - 60 seconds a day. Which isn't much, bit when you miss the 1st 30 or 60 seconds or the last you get pissed. Anyway.. Since I used this utility, I'm never off. Clock Mon along with the automatic time synch set to once a day, I've been golden

google clockmon and you should go right there..

Oh... and it's free...(i believe)

Jim

[AboveUnrefined]

Instead of installing additional software on your computer you can use a different timeserver that is geographically closest to you...

Look up your location under ISO (US CA for California, SG for Singapore, etc. -- don't use time.nist.gov if you're in CO as that was an option in XP so it's probably also crammed with requests all the time) and then copy the HostName to the server field in the Internet Time Tab in the clock setup (replace time.windows.com to clock.via.net if you are in California)-- ensure that the AccessPolicy is OpenAccess and make sure Windows has the correct time zone set:
http://ntp.isc.org/bin/view/Servers/...OneTimeServers
Referring link:
http://ntp.isc.org/bin/view/Servers/...sing_the_Lists

If you want you can also do the above said registry tweaks to make windows sync more often... but be nice to your selected time server and don't bombard them with requests every 4 seconds.

NTP is THE standard for time sync, and it's built into XP already so any other application that's downloading the time is just wasting space on your drive and in your memory as it's already in XP.

clockmon sounds neat if your board keeps the time well and you trust it enough... then you don't need to sync out on the net and save a lot of seconds syncing.

[Polypro]

Good info, thanks.

P

[jbuszkie]

One thing I noticed about synching too often. I went this route before I installed clock mon. I had it set to synch like every 15 minutes or so.. but I noticed that I had a hiccup in all my shows about every 15 minutes or so.. So when I was trying to do an update it must have caused my programs to miss a small section...
That's when I did more research and found clock mon..

[roxy99]

Originally Posted by jbuszkie

One thing I noticed about synching too often. I went this route before I installed clock mon. I had it set to synch like every 15 minutes or so.. but I noticed that I had a hiccup in all my shows about every 15 minutes or so.. So when I was trying to do an update it must have caused my programs to miss a small section...
That's when I did more research and found clock mon..

Can u pls elaborate on how clockmon is dif from other resync applications? I am using Dimension4 and litterly have to resync every 5min. Even at that, I can have up to a 30 sec advance in my recordings. My clock is litterly on speed. Running fast at the rate of 10se per min but only when SageTv is running. Obviously that amount of frequent re-sync is bound to eventually lead to hiccups. I need to solve this problem. What do you think is causing.

I already ruled out the CMOS battery and my system is rock solid and does not exhibit this behavious anywhere else. I am using the latest Java helper.

[jbuszkie]

As I understand it, once windows comes up it uses it keeps it's own clock and only gets it's reference from the hardware realtime clock when it boots. What clock mon does is compare the system software time to the hardware realtime clock. if it's different by x amount, then it will reset the system time to the hardware realtime clock. I found that my hardware realtime clock was way more accurate that the system time. So I update like every 5 minutes or so with clock mon and once a day with the internet time.

I've been happy ever since..

Is that what you were asking? I don't know what dimension4 does? so I can't really say what it does differently from clock mon.

Edit: After checking, Dimension4 just goes out to the internet. Clockmon will synch with the hardware, not the internet.


Jim

[DFA]

Also, see this paralell thread of clock issues. Perhaps more wide spread than thought. http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16817

DFA