Time and Date

[Mike McMullen]

From: "Aaron M. Hirsch" <aaron.hirsch at atosorigin.com>
To: "For users of Fedora Core releases" <fedora-list at redhat.com>
Sent: Saturday, May 29, 2004 10:54 AM
Subject: Re: Time and Date


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> If you are wanting to keep the time in sync why not just use ntp?  ntpdate
> <ntpserver> will set the current time for your machine for the timezone
you
> have set...then you wouldn't have to worry about the date command.  You
could
> also run the ntpd daemon to keep time in sync automatically...just an
idea.
>
> Also using hwclock --systohc to set the hardware clock to the system time
> before a shutdown/reboot would also help out some.
>
> Of course, this only applies if you are looking for actual time and not
> future/past time.
>

The only issue is that if your date/.time are initially off by 1000 seconds
ntpd
won't set the time. Per the man page:

"In case there is  no TOY chip or for some reason its time is more than
1000s
from the server time, ntpd  assumes something must be  terribly  wrong  and
the only reliable action is for the operator to intervene and set the clock
by
hand."

Since ntpd typically is automatically started in any relatively recent
release of
RH or Fedora, if the time is way off then it has exceeded the 1000 second
threshold and you'll have to set the time by hand.

Which means you need to use 'date'.

Mike