HWCLOCK(5)

📦 version 3.14, in debian bookworm, debian trixie, ubuntu jammy

💖 HWCLOCK(5) 💖

ok so bestie, welcome to the hwclock manual page — this one's all about the lil settings file that controls how the hwclock init script behaves. it's short, it's sweet, and ngl it's mostly a "please don't touch this" situation. let's get into it 🦋

✨ NAME ✨

hwclock — settings that affect the behaviour of the hwclock init script 🎀

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

ok so there's this file, /etc/default/hwclock, and it holds settings in POSIX format, like this:

VAR=VAL

that's the whole vibe. just VAR=VAL, one assignment per line, only one per line, no stacking, no chaos. you can also drop comments in there — anything starting with # is a comment and gets ignored, so go off, annotate your life 💅

💖 SETTINGS 💖

here's the tea — these are the settings you can actually set, bestie:

  • HCTOSYS_DEVICE — this is the hardware clock device you want to use. it defaults to rtc0. and honestly? it should probably match up with the CONFIG_RTC_HCTOSYS_DEVICE kernel config option. they're giving soulmates, fr fr 🫶
⚠️ okay this is the important part, don't scroll past it: if you change this, you also need to install a custom udev rule, mirroring /usr/lib/udev/rules.d/85-hwclock.rules. otherwise? the hardware clock device gets ignored during boot. ignored!! at boot!! like it wasn't even invited 😭

and listen — on almost all systems, this should not be changed. like, at all. leave it alone, she's fine, she's thriving 💀

🦋 NOTES 🦋

on systems using systemd as init, the hwclock init script is ignored. periodt. it's just not the main character on those systems, no cap.

👑 SEE ALSO 👑

and that's the whole page, bestie ✨ this lil slice of the Debian Administrator's Manual is dated Dec 2020 and it's filed under HWCLOCK(5) — mwah, iconic, no notes 💋💖

📦 where this page comes from