The Sysadmin’s Daily Grind: HTPDate
TIME GAMES
Despite the cyclical disruptions so typical of LUG meetings, our intrepid columnist, Charly, reveals how he set the system time in spite of a blocked NTP port.
I am writing this article from the LUG Camp at Wuppertal Germany, and the time is… – er, I have no idea. A kind person from the LUG Flensburg hands me a bottle of Flensburg beer, and I say “Thanks”… Enough has already been said about NTP (Network Time Protocol) based time synchronization, and in fact, I confess to having written about NTP in the past. But today, I will discuss how to time sync without NTP. Up curtain and welcome to HTPDate [1] Of course, NTP is the tool of choice if you need to sync the system clock across a network. But there are times when network synchronization is not possible. For example, if the machine you need to sync is hiding behind a totally hardened firewall maintained by a totally hardened admin who says things like “NTP? Never heard of it, so it must be something bad!”
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Red Hat Releases RHEL 10 Early
Red Hat quietly rolled out the official release of RHEL 10.0 a bit early.
-
openSUSE Joins End of 10
openSUSE has decided to not only join the End of 10 movement but it also will no longer support the Deepin Desktop Environment.
-
New Version of Flatpak Released
Flatpak 1.16.1 is now available as the latest, stable version with various improvements.
-
IBM Announces Powerhouse Linux Server
IBM has unleashed a seriously powerful Linux server with the LinuxONE Emperor 5.
-
Plasma Ends LTS Releases
The KDE Plasma development team is doing away with the LTS releases for a good reason.
-
Arch Linux Available for Windows Subsystem for Linux
If you've ever wanted to use a rolling release distribution with WSL, now's your chance.
-
System76 Releases COSMIC Alpha 7
With scores of bug fixes and a really cool workspaces feature, COSMIC is looking to soon migrate from alpha to beta.
-
OpenMandriva Lx 6.0 Available for Installation
The latest release of OpenMandriva has arrived with a new kernel, an updated Plasma desktop, and a server edition.
-
TrueNAS 25.04 Arrives with Thousands of Changes
One of the most popular Linux-based NAS solutions has rolled out the latest edition, based on Ubuntu 25.04.
-
Fedora 42 Available with Two New Spins
The latest release from the Fedora Project includes the usual updates, a new kernel, an official KDE Plasma spin, and a new System76 spin.