rtc-twl: catch22 in 2.6.37 and 2.6.38 when clock was never set

[Alexander Holler <holler@ahsoftware.de>]

Hello,

it just happened here that the rechargeable backup battery for the RTC 
on a TPS65950 run out off power, because of some days while the device 
wasn't powered.

Afterwards I couldn't read or set the clock with hwclock using a kernel 
2.6.37.n or 2.6.38.n.

I don't have a fix, but I think I've analyzed the problem and can offer 
a (bad) workaround.

What happens is the following:

When trying to read or set the clock with hwclock, the driver (rtc-twl) 
starts an alarm, but the irq for the alarm will never get called. The 
result is that a select in hwclock times out (for both operations, read 
or set).

Because I had this clock running before, I've got the idea to try one of 
those old OMAP-kernels (2.6.32-angstrom) using the same userland.
And with that kernel I could set the clock.
Using 2.6.37 or 2.6.38 afterwards, hwclock did function again, both read 
an set are working.

So it looks like there is a catch22 in kernels >=2.6.37 (I haven't 
tested .33-.36):

When the clock was never set, the alarm(-irq) doesn't work, so hwclock 
doesn't work, so one can't set the clock.

Regards,

Alexander Holler