> Keeping good time

It's helpful to have your system keep the correct time. It's obviously useful to know what the time is, but certain functionality won't work well or at all if the computer's notion of time is wrong.

• Entries in log files which show times will be far less useful
• Encrypted connections can rely on system clocks being synchronized

Tribblix can correct the system time with a high degree of accuracy using NTP - the Network Time Protocol - which compares your clock with a number of reference clocks on the internet. The implementation used in Tribblix is called chrony.

In recent releases, chrony is installed by default. If it isn't, then install it using:

zap install TRIBchrony

To check if it's running, use the command:

svcs -p chrony

If it's not online, then enable it using:

svcadm enable svc:/network/chrony:default

If the system has been running without time synchronization, then the clock may have drifted. This will slowly be corrected. To see what the current state is, use the chronyc tracking command. This will give a variety of information, which will include something like:

# chronyc tracking
...
System time     : 14.466815948 seconds fast of NTP time

The above shows that the clock is off by almost 15 seconds. After a few minutes this should come down to close to zero, and chrony should be able to hold the time accurate to within a few milliseconds.

Index | Previous Section | Next Section