HOWTO: Set the Date and Time

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HOWTO: Set the Date and Time

Posted by Jason on Wednesday March 28, @10:21PM
from the Time-Warp dept.
If you would like to check what time your system is set to, or set your date and time- try the date command.

[Check the Date and Time]

To check the date and time on your system, login is any user and issue the date command like so:

$ date

Wed Mar 28 20:55:47 AKST 2001

Notice the time is shown as a 24 hour clock- 20:55 is 8:55PM, in the USA this is known as military time. Also notice the timezone info, in my case AKST (Alaska Standard Time -9 GMT).

[Setting the Date and Time]

There are a couple of ways to set the date and time. You can set it manually with the date command, or by using an internet time server with the ntpdate command.

[Set the Time Manually]
To set the date and time as it is displayed in the above example, login as root and issue the date command with the following parameters:

Login: root
Password: ********

# date 010328205547

Here is how to break it down number by number:

  01 - The Year: 2001
  03 - The Month: March
  28 - The Day : 28th
  20 - The Hour: 8pm
  55 - The Minutes: 55
  47 - The seconds: 47

[Set the Time Using a Time Server]
If your FreeBSD box has access to the internet, you can use an internet time server to set your date and time. Login as root and issue the ntpdate command:

Login: root
Password: ********

# ntpdate time.some-time-server.com

28 Mar 20:26:20 ntpdate[591]: adjust time server 192.168.1.251 offset -4.178968 sec

Notice that according to the time server at my time provider (bogus ip in my example), my time was off by about 4 seconds.

If you would like more information on these commands, I recommend the man pages.

  man date
  man ntpdate

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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them.
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Re: HOWTO: Set the Date and Time
by Felix on Tuesday September 03, @05:14AM

lowrider# date Tue Sep 3 15:13:28 CEST 2002 lowrider# date -n 1407; date Tue Sep 3 14:07:00 CEST 2002 Tue Sep 3 15:13:31 CEST 2002 What am I doing wrong? /var/log/messages tells: Sep 3 15:17:11 lowrider /kernel: Time adjustment clamped to -1 second Sep 3 15:17:11 lowrider date: date set by felix

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Time adjustment clamped
by Alister Lee on Saturday May 24, @01:32AM

This relates to the kernel security setting you are running init at (changed under security settings with sysinstall). See man init for more information.

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Re: HOWTO: Set the Date and Time
by mooky mooksgill on Thursday January 09, @03:38PM

in your date example, i think there needs to be a dot separating seconds - as in #date 0103282055.47 thanks, mooky

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Re: HOWTO: Set the Date and Time
by RON D`ADDIO on Sunday March 09, @08:40AM

Hi! I`m writing because I just got a fax machine and to set time I need to set it 24 hour format. But the problem is I`m not familiar with this type of time. Can you help me with an easier way of understanding how to do this. I`m completely new to this. Please sent me informaion as soon as possible. Thanks , Ron

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Re: HOWTO: Set the Date and Time
by Shawn on Wednesday March 19, @05:46PM

this is how it works on my Redhat 8.0 box: #date 0319203603.50 Wed Mar 19 20:36:33 EST 2003 from left to right: 03 - Month 19 - date 20 - hour (8pm) 36 - minute 03 - year (2003) .50 - second (note the dot in front of it)

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Re: HOWTO: Set the Date and Time
by mhike on Thursday July 24, @09:15PM

install rdate from ports:

cd /usr/ports/sysutils/rdate

make install & make clean

paste the following to /etc/crontab

sync your time every 2 am everyday :

0 2 * * * root /usr/local/sbin/rdate nist1.datum.com

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