FAQ section 10.17 : I cannot change the time on my system by more than one second! How do I get around this?

[Tarjei Jensen]

Hi,

Changing the time can be done by root executing /usr/sbin/ntpd. It will
depend on the /etc/ntp.conf file having functioning ntp servers.

ntpd -n -g -g

will set the time and not fork (-n option). It logs to stdout or stderr and
this output can be seen by the user. When the time and date is ok, use ^C
to stop the program.

This command can be necessary with all computers that don't have a real
time clock. e.g. The Raspberry PI computers. It may be worthwhile for
owners to modify the startup script to start the ntpd daemon with the -g -g
options as standard.

This is done by adding or modifying the ntpd_flags variable : in
/etc/rc.d/ntpd


The long term solution is to make sure ntpd is running as a daemon by
modifying the /etc/rc.conf file and adding

ntpd_enable="YES"

ntpd can then be started on the command line with the command

service ntpd start


Greetings,