Metrics dependency on a RTC source should be made way clearer

[Popolechien]

I ran an image for about 2.5 hours, browsing a half-dozen zim files or so (videos, wikipedia, magoe, etc.). Wikipedia I browsed at least two dozen pages, and the videos ran for a solid 30 minutes in total.

Went to metrics and got the following activity graph.

Here is the image order ID: https://imager.kiwix.org/orders/f/65f2c3e1f33c1100257ed093

[benoit74]

Will have a look

[benoit74]

@Popolechien

Is it possible that you start your image again and tell me:

• which day is displayed on the upper portion of the screen? (where it is written "11 February 2024" in your screenshot)
• what happens when you click "Week", "Month", "Year", do you begin to have the possibility to see some data?

(I suppose you've shutdown your Pi since your bug report, tell me if I'm wrong)

It is working on my device, but I suspect I've found the issue (which is nasty and I won't be able to fix it if confirmed).

[rgaudin]

Indeed real dates are only usable when the Pi has an RTC module attached

[benoit74]

Indeed real dates are only usable when the Pi has an RTC module attached

You spoiled me!

[Popolechien]

Still 11 February 2024
Week: week 06 2024
Month: February 2024

Which is kind of weird since the image was generated in March, I believe (14 March, in fact).

[benoit74]

Thank you. As Renaud said, without a RTC module, the Pi date is not kept, it is reset at every restart (to the last base-image update if I'm not mistaken).

Conclusion: metrics service cannot work properly on purely offline devices which do not have a RTC module

We should have made it clearer WAY before, it is a big problem indeed.

😰😰😰

[benoit74]

@kelson42 FYI

[rgaudin]

Created offspot/offspot-config#30 ; won't fix anything but would be better to have each card date off its creation date IMO.

[rgaudin]

it is reset at every restart (to the last base-image update if I'm not mistaken).

No it's not reset on restart. It picks up from the last know date (base image one for now) and simply progresses for the duration it is online. If the Pi is powered-on right after base image creation (not possible!) and kept always on, you wouldn't know…

If the Pi is powered on 1h per week, after a year, the date would have only progressed 52h (2days)