I've inherited a 4.11 server that's displaying those annoying "Synthetic Time" messages. The hardware clock is correct, but issuing "Time" at the command line tells me that DST Start is April 4, 2038, DST End is October 31, 2038, today is Sunday, February 7, 1988 11:06p UTC and 6:06p EST. All this on Tuesday, January 2, 2001.
Is this a belated Y2K issue and, if so, what do I need to do? I've tried the stuff Steven Pittsley recommended and it hasn't helped.
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I presume your server is on the latest patch level? In that case, most likely it was not yet on 1/1/2000, and it then made a mess of its time. Since then the time of the server has been corrected, but NDS is running in the time you described, be it that its clock is running slower than the "real" one. Synthetic time just means that NDS has slowed down its clock until it is in sync with the real time. This is perfectly normal and acceptable, and could go on for several days/weeks. After all, NDS depends on timestamps and can't handle time being jumped backwards and forwards all the time. If you really want to get rid of it, try to "declare a new epoch" in DSREPAIR.
The NetWare OS relies on the hardware clock to initially set its own. Once SERVER.EXE loads it grabs hardware time once and sets two internally kept clocks. Cold-booting the server should correct the OS-time.
Quickest and dirtiest way to reapair that is to run a quick DSREAPAIR to ensure database integrity, verify that the time displayed at the console prompt is the correct one, then under advanced options in DSREPAIR, partition and schema operations, select Repair All Timestamps and Declare a New Epoch. That'll set all the timestamps on every object to the current time and eliminate the error. All operations should proceed normally after that.
If you can't find that option, you may have to load DSREPAIR with the -A switch.
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Synthetic Time Revisited - Y2K?
Is this a belated Y2K issue and, if so, what do I need to do? I've tried the stuff Steven Pittsley recommended and it hasn't helped.