Comment 3 for bug 347881

I would personally think this is an issue with ntpdate, specifically with its hook in if-up.d. time shouldn't really run backwards.

I'm looking at karmic, that script (/etc/network/if-up.d/ntpdate) says:

| # This is a heuristic: The idea is that if a static interface is brought
| # up, that is a major event, and we can put in some extra effort to fix
| # the system time. Feel free to change this, especially if you regularly
| # bring up new network interfaces.
| if [ "$METHOD" = static ]; then
| OPTS="-b"
| fi

So, that can easily enough be commented out. However, I'd think this should be more specifically configurable (/etc/default/ntpdate perhaps), and personally think the default should be to not run backwards except on first boot.