Why? mktime() failed unexpectedly (rc -1). Aborting.

[David Teague <dbt@elentari.cs.wcu.edu>]

Hi 

My system is an OLD (circa 1990)  486/66 with ISA motherboard and
64K Cache, 32 MB RAM, and 4 Gig IDE disk.

When I try to set the hardware clock, I get the error message
indicated in the subject line. The entire exchange that brought this
to mind is:

gandalf# /usr/sbin/netdate time_a.timefreq.bldrdoc.gov
time_a.timefreq.bldrdoc.gov -0.801 Fri Feb  4 14:01:28.000
gandalf# /sbin/hwclock -w
mktime() failed unexpectedly (rc -1).  Aborting.

Can someone advise what is causing mktime() to fail? What I can do
to fix this? I hate not being able to automate the setting of the
hardware clock. CMOS seems to remember the setting and so doesn't
give me grief aobut rebooting.

--David
David Teague, dbt@cs.wcu.edu
Debian GNU/Linux Because software support is free, timely,
                 useful, technically accurate, and friendly.
                 (I'm hoping this is all of the above!)