mijikin wrote:
[...]

As you suggested, I checked /var/log/messages but did not see anything abnormal.

As shown in the top screen, seti and boinc run with a nice value of 19 and 0 respectively. I did try to run boinc with nice=19 but that did not make any difference.
For a variety of reasons, upgrading to a more recent version of mdk is not an option right now.

I'm far from being fluent with Linux, so if you or anybody else know of a way to at least diagnose the problem, I will be grateful.

Very strange...

I too am running Boinc but with CPDN and Seti. The clock on KDE shows the correct time.

For your system, what happens if you get the time from "date" on the command line?

If the system time is fine, it may just be that your (old) version of KDE is at fault under sustained seti loading.

A lot has been updated since Mandrake 9.0.


I can sympathise with you for being cautious to upgrade an existing nicely working system!

Regards,
Martin