[Virtual-pkg-base-maintainers] Bug#520763: base: Hardware clock reset

[Nathan]

Package: base
Severity: important

When using my iBook G4 on battery power, the battery ran out, causing the machine to shut down. When I restarted and logged into XFCE, Orage and the panel clock were showing the time and date as 0:00 1 January 1904. Using hwclock --show I was able to determine that the hardware clock had also been set to this time. Additionally, I had a problem with the XFCE menu in that it would disappear after a couple of seconds, regardless of whether it was summoned by right-clicking or by clicking on the panel icon. Switching the machine off and on again had no effect. I reset the hardware clock by using hwclock --set, rebooted, and found that all clocks now read the correct time and date and that the problem with the XFCE menu appeared to have resolved itself. I know it's my own fault for letting my battery run out, but would it be possible to prevent the hardware clock from resetting itself when the system shuts down unexpectedly? Thanks for all your hard work!

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 5.0
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (500, 'stable')
Architecture: powerpc (ppc)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-1-powerpc
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash