TITLE: What are an adviser's responsibilities?
QUESTION [11 upvotes]: There seems to be a wide variance in what faculty members view as their responsibilities as a student’s adviser. I understand that some advisers go above and beyond what's expected and we can't hold everyone to their standards. I also understand that there is no one right method and two advisers with very different methods can be equally successful. However, it does seem useful to understand what we view as the baseline. 
My question simply is: what are an adviser's role and responsibilities?
This question refers to both research as well as professional development (support, networking, job search, etc).

REPLY [7 votes]: Apart from all the straightforward things that too many people don't do (meet regularly, help find a problem and suggest a plan of attack, help package partial progress into complete if modest theorems, etc) here's the big one:
Be honest if things are going badly! 
Ask your student what their goals are. This basically means ask when do they expect to graduate and what kind of job do they want. If they are not on track, say so, because I bet you they didn't know that. Please do not tell them they're not ready at the last second, or write them a lukewarm letter while smiling to their face.