Anybody know how to set the hardware clock on the n800? Seems the date/time adj from control panel or the clock app. sets the software clock, and from an xterm window the normal Debian hwclock command doesn't seem to exist.

here's how:

/mnt/initfs/usr/bin/retutime --rtc-from-system


you can use:

/mnt/initfs/usr/bin/retutime --get-time

to check the current RTC clock time, too.

see also the adjust-clock pkg at: http://nitapps.com/

So why don't they do it on shutdown like RedHat ?

I am using ntpdate in cron to keep the clock correct, then found it was 24hrs out when I rebooted so it took somewhat longer to get a GPS fix.
Anyway, I have added retutime to the cron command.

It's fine to automatically sync hardware clock from software clock at shutdown if you run ntp, it's very bad if you don't. (For desktop systems you should read up on /etc/adjtime and you will understand why.) That's why I hate what RedHat and some other distros do.

right, so I recommend using: adjust-clock from http://nitapps.com/, which is an adjtime equivalent. this issue is discussed further on that page.