unRaid changes BIOS clock time


z0ki

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So I’ve come across an annoyance that I have been trying to fix for a few days now. I noticed that my bios clock resets after every unRaid reboot. I set it to the correct time then I reboot and it looks like it changes to UTC time. I originally thought it was the battery but I changed that and it’s still doing it.

 

I then rebooted with a monitor connected to my server and saw thus time (marked in yellow)

 

7b311bcc11222b8d4539a9c07071cedd.jpg

 

 

So even though my unRaid Time & Date settings and NTP servers are correct it looks like it is changing my BIOS clock at will after any reboot, or power down. And then it turn it ruins my RTC which I use to turn my server on every morning at 7am.

 

So, is there an actual fix for this? Surely there must be a way for my BIOS to keep my local GMT (AEST) Australian Eastern Standard Time as it should and not have unRaid change it?

 

 

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12 hours ago, Frank1940 said:

I am going to make a really stupid observation.  Setup the RTC to use UTC time---  7:00AM (AEST) is 8:00PM (UTC).

So after a little more research it looks like It's the linux based system that is reverting the BIOS clock to UTC automatically which I did not know it did that. That explains a lot then.

Edited by z0ki
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So there is a problem with this 'system' from what I can tell.

 

My server will no longer turn on via RTC and It looks like it is due to the date being wrong in my BIOS after unRaid shutdowns or reboots. Instead of it saying Saturday (but with UTC time) it says Friday. If I change it to today's date (1/02/20) and set the time for it to turn on from shutdown it does.

 

So why is unRaid upon rebooting/shutting down change the day to what it is in the UK? From reading little what I could on this topic, it seems it should just change the bios clock to UTC but keep my Local date for this reason?

Edited by z0ki
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Just now, Frank1940 said:

I am going to ping @limetech for you.  He may be able to provide an answer...

Thanks @Frank1940

 

The bios time is 100% accurate (to the second) according to Time.is/London but obviously when it's 7am Saturday morning here in Australia, it is still 9pm Friday night there so the date in the bios doesn't adjust to this and stay's on Friday (until midnight UTC time obviously)

 

It seems to be the main issue here as I said, if I manually change the date and then set the time for the server to turn on in the bios it does. Strange one lol

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14 minutes ago, limetech said:

Right, Linux sets bios time to UTC - nothing to be done about that.  This has been an annoyance in the past with dual booted windows/Linux too.

Correct. But is it not possible to have the date in the BIOS correspond with my local timezone? This was fine before not sure why it is giving me issues now? I understand it sets the BIOS to UTC and that's fine I can bypass that by setting it to turn the server on at 19h (7am AEST) but obviously the date is wrong it still thinks it is Friday when it is indeed Saturday morning. I am sure the date was fine for me in the past as my server did always turn on at 7am until only recently.

 

Is there a way to fix this?

Edited by z0ki
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2 hours ago, tjb_altf4 said:

Use a timezone calculator (google) to work out UTC time/date compared to your AEST time/date you want to schedule.

It should only be a pain to sort out once.

I've done that. The problem is that as I stated when it is Saturday morning here it is still Friday night for their timezone that is set by unRaid in the BIOS. Even though I do set it for say 19:00 the server does not turn on in the morning as the date is wrong between UTC timezone and mine. I feel that is the root cause of the problem here (could be wrong) but as I said this was working before it's only just recently that it's stopped working completely.

 

For extra info. If I wake up at 7am my time, and I load up my server and go into the bios and set the time to 19:05pm (and set the date forward as it should be to the correct day for my timezone) and switch the server off as soon as 19:05pm hits (7:05am my time) the server turns itself on. In contrast if I leave the DAY alone for the UTC timezone that its set itself (which is like I said Friday evening there, Saturday morning here) soon as 19:05pm hits server doesn't turn on automatically.

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Where are you making the setting to turn the computer on?  (I can only imagine that it is in the BIOS.)  My suggestion is to ignore the actual date where you are and use the date for the UTC time that you want the server to turn on.  (It may be yesterday but so what!!!  You are playing a  game with a computer system.  You have to figure out the rules that the system is using.  You don't get to set the rules.)  Let Unraid and Linux worry about the actual date in your time zone.  (I would bet that it is correct in Unraid.)    

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Where are you making the setting to turn the computer on?  (I can only imagine that it is in the BIOS.)  My suggestion is to ignore the actual date where you are and use the date for the UTC time that you want the server to turn on.  (It may be yesterday but so what!!!  You are playing a  game with a computer system.  You have to figure out the rules that the system is using.  You don't get to set the rules.)  Let Unraid and Linux worry about the actual date in your time zone.  (I would bet that it is correct in Unraid.)    


Right, so what do you propose I do to overcome this issue? Because as I said, if I leave the date as is in the BIOS (set by UTC) and set it to wake up at a set UTC time (which equates to 7am my time) it does not turn on. If I bring the date forward manually and do a test time to turn on half an hour later it turns on.

I am going in my BIOS > APM > Power on by RTC (ENABLE) > RTC ALARM DAYS set to 0 for everyday > Hour 19 (which will be 7am my time) > Minute 0 > Seconds 0.



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This is a Motherboard/BIOS problem.  You should begin by Googling to see if anyone else with this MB has had the same problem.  You can check to see if there is and update to the BIOS that resolves the problem.  (I am failing to understand why if the setting is to "Everyday" why the date even enters into the equation...)  You do have the time zone (in the BIOS) set to UTC...

 

You could ask on the support thread for the Motherboard or contact their Tech Support for assistance.  (You can't be the only one using this MB with Linux!) 

 

Another solution is to use 'Wake up on LAN' but that can also be a bag of worms.

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  • 2 months later...

Just thought I would respond to this topic to clarify some things after I found the exact same issues as the OP. Many people will want to automatically shutdown their server late at night, and then have it power on early in the morning to save power, noise and light. The shutdown part is easy using unraid plugins and is out of scope for discussion here. The startup can be done in really only two main ways which cover unattended power on. Wake on LAN (WOL) and power on by Real time Clock (RTC - computers BIOS clock on the motherboard). For most people in home server environments, WOL is not an option since they will not have any other network equipment online either of which could send the magic packet. This is possible to do over WAN but let's not get into that discussion here since this is to discuss using RTC to power on from full shutdown.

 

Let it be understood firstly that this is not a motherboard or BIOS issue. This is expected behaviour from Linux Operating Systems during shutdown, that the reset of the BIOS Real Time Clock (RTC) to UTC standard time occurs.

 

Assuming that the OP is trying to shutdown his server at midnight Australian Eastern Time (AET), then this is 14:00hrs UTC. What he is saying is that  when the server shuts down at midnight AET, it sets the BIOS RTC back to UTC, and at the same time, the date shifts back a day since the reset takes it back accross midnight during the reset. It then comes to 07:00hrs AET and the server does not start up because the RTC is now at 21:00hrs with a date of the day before (since UTC has not passed midnight yet for that day). As a result the server to get back in sync requires both the time and the date resetting. Depending on the time of day that the OP performs any shutdown or reboot, this could happen again where the date also shifts. i.e. if it occurs during 00:00:00 AET to 09:59:59 AET. 

 

In any case, even if the OP sets shutdown to be 23:59:59 and avoids the date shifting issue, the BIOS RTC will still be set back to UTC which will cause issues with the BIOS RTC timings to start it back up.

 

So how do we fix the issue? As already suggested above, you simply set your BIOS RTC to the exact current time in UTC. Then you set the startup time in the power on by RTC options to be 21:00 hrs. The only "issue" as such is that yes, your BIOS clock and date will sometimes read an alien time/date to you. But really this is a set and forget option. Once you have this set, unraid will always show your correct local time for everything, including logs. 

We face a similar issue in the UK since for 6 months of every year we have daylight saving time where we have either BST (British Summer Time) which is UTC +1, or GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) which is a timezone that is basically the same as UTC, UTC +0. So right now I have to set my server to turn on at 06:00 hours for it to come on at 07:00 hrs. When the clocks change again in October, I will have to set it back to 07:00 hrs.

 

I hope this clarifies the situation.

Edited by jaybee
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  • 4 weeks later...

Just piggybacking onto this, I've only recently come across this little annoyance. I'm currently based in Dublin, Ireland....which is UTC+1. However, within Unraid's own time & date settings, Dublin is listed as UTC+0. Unraid seems to pull the correct time when in operation, and displays the correct time & date despite the lack of a +1 to account for the timezone. However, on shutdown, as discussed in this thread, it is setting my bios time back by one hour. It's as if the time set on shutdown DOES NOT account for the timezone I'm in. 

 

If within Unraid I was able to set Dublin as UTC+1 (as that is the correct offset), then the shutdown time pushed to the bios should also be UTC+1, and there'd be no issue. As is stands, it seems for me that Unraid is incorrectly pushing UTC+0 to the bios, instead of UTC+1 given that timezone I've set within the settings.

 

Unraid Settings:

 

unraidtime.png

 

World Clock:

 

unraidtime2.png
 

 


 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Unrayed
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