Thoughts on solution to 1970-ness

[phillid]

Hi all.
With no RTC, I'd gotten quite tired of systemd saying that the system's been up for forty four years and the scattered log entries + files from 1970. NTPd was already configured perfectly, but it never ended up setting the time until most other services had started and started logging with bogus dates. Gah. I did a quick Google search to see if I could hold all systemd services from running (except ntpd's dependencies) until NTP had completed.... Even then, that'd still mean that systemd and a few selected services would have been running for 44 years... I'd still have log entries and files from 1970.

I ended up coming up with a small shell script which I execute as my init. It enables a network interface using dhcpcd, runs ntpd, leaves no trace it was ever there (except for an optional log) and calls `/sbin/init`. I'm quite pleased with it, except the fact that I'm not just using `init=/usr/bin/init` (semi-tacky IMO). Aside from that, it's as it there's an RTC. One issue I'm aware of are that devices like USB wifi adapters won't be able to be used. Also, it doesn't officially support setups where a DHCP server isn't present (you'd have to rely on dhcpcd's fallback profile).

I decided it's about time to put it in the AUR, but I was just wondering what y'all think of this solution, and how/if others have tackled this problem?


EDIT: With a bit of searching on the forums, I found a pretty-much-identical approach

[pepedog]

Did you look at fake-hwclock?

[phillid]

Yeah, I did read about fake-hwclock, but I'm too much of a time and date perfectionist for something of that sort It wouldn't be accurate enough. I would use fake-hwclock if I only ever powered-off for a few minutes at a time, where the bogus-ness of the faked time wouldn't be significant. However I often have certain machines powered off for days on end, so while fake-hwclock would save be from being stuck in the year 1970, it would still make the logs look funny.

Like I said, I'm a time and date perfectionist

[nwestfal]

Aside from the inaccuracy, fake-hwclock doesn't seem to be a complete solution, as I note in my logs that some services get started up before fake-hwclock runs.