[mct]

Under what conditions do you have a usefully functioning system when the clock is so off you need to do multi minute jumps?

One example is embedded systems. Many don't have an RTC, or boot after the RTC has lost power. If a network connection finally comes up, NTP will instantly fast-forward the clock by years

[tedunangst]

The simple solution would seem to be setting the clock first then doing the packet capture instead of setting the clock in the middle of the packet capture.

[toast0]

for debian based embedded systems, the fake-hwclock package is helpful here (it's a script to periodically save the current time, and restore on boot). You'll still have big jumps after a power loss, but probably not years. It's also helpful in case you ever change the motherboard on a regular system with a RTC.

[cperciva]

Many embedded systems don't have any writable durable storage.