[wroteafaq]

This could be an IRIX thing I just don't understand, so please bear with me.

I'm starting to bring up a few of these boxes, and it's going reasonably well.  I have a fresh 6.2 install (done on a 4K)
and I've moved the disk into another 4K system that I just replaced the battery in.  After the predictable string of "can't
set tod clock" messages it proceeded to boot to a login prompt, but along the way gave me the "check and reset the
date" warning.  The date is correct, and the machine isn't on the network yet, so it can't be an ntp disagreement or
anything.  I rebooted a couple of times in an effort to get things to sync up, but the message remains.

What am I missing?

[robespierre]

"Check and reset the date" is a message from IRIX (maybe going back to v7 Unix or BSD) when it boots and detects an inconsistency between the current date and files on the root volume. For example, if the last modification time of the root directory is "in the future", it will issue that warning. There are various ways this can happen, such as NFS mounting from a server with a different time base, or changes to the timezone files.

[wroteafaq]

I get it; I think I just expected that it would clear itself once the system had a chance to come up, fsck, etc.,
but I guess it has no way of knowing which of the conflicting values to set it to. I just did a "date" (and set
it to within a few minutes of its present setting) and the message vanished on the next boot. So it must be
looking to the user to explicity confirm the RTC value by setting it - even if only to the time/date it already has.