On the current time value

[l0rdphi1]

It is off.. by hours! Well, either the time is not correct, or possibly it is set in the wrong time zone.

Thanks in advance ;)

[ProWebUK]

Do you mean the forum time...?

If so I can see what you mean! All times are GMT. The time now is 03:30 PM. and its actually 22:33 gmt :)

Chris

[l0rdphi1]

Yes, forum time :)

[DirectAdmin Support]

I've just set the forum time to MST (Alberta, Canada)... although the system time is already set correctly, and the time in the forum (for me anyway) is correct for our local time here. Let's see if the change in offset will actually make it wrong (for me) :)...

Edit: ... yup.. that's 7 hours off now.. for me. The server system time is correct, and it also set to MST.. so... I'll just set the offset back to zero.

John

[DirectAdmin Support]

There we go. I just didn't have the timezone set in my user options, so I had the forum time setup to suite ME :D

John

[ProWebUK]

Still 2 minutes off...:D ok.... now im being picky.. the time is perfect really ;)

[l0rdphi1]

/usr/bin/rdate -s time.nist.gov :D

(I run that every hour btw)

[S2S-Robert]

And would this be automatically updated if you're in a different time zone? Or how does this exactly work? It looks quite alright to run it hourly :)

[ProWebUK]

I personally dont bother using time servers.... usually when you set the time theres enough power in the wall socket to keep the clock arms moving at the rate they should...... :D

[l0rdphi1]

Well, they tend to drift a little week by week :)

I suggest at *least* running it once a week.

And on different time zones, I think you have to find a time server in your time zone. Not 100% sure though.

[ProWebUK]

Originally posted by l0rdphi1
Well, they tend to drift a little week by week :)



Never had a problem with using it manually.... I just checked a server thats been online around 3 mmonths now and had the time setup first day.... still spot on.... possibly seconds off but not as far as I know :)

[S2S-Robert]

well I'm having the time issue, so I'm going to start looking for a sync server in my time-zone :D

[nobaloney]

Originally posted by ProWebUK
I personally dont bother using time servers.... usually when you set the time theres enough power in the wall socket to keep the clock arms moving at the rate they should...... :D
Since there's always some drift over time, and since we've never managed to set the time "exactly", we use a time-server hourly to make sure all the systems we manage, in multiple data centers, have the same time.

You'd be surprised how important that is when tracking problems through logs, especiallly mail delivery problems between servers.

Originally posted by l0rdphi1
And on different time zones, I think you have to find a time server in your time zone. Not 100% sure though.
You do NOT need to use a time-server in your time-zone, though using one close by will result in a bit more accuracy, since there'll be less deviation from average latency (which your sync program will adjust for) for an individual time transmission, over a shorter distance.

What we do (RHL7.3) is set the bios clock at GMT at build time, and let the RHL installation program know we've done it (so it'll handle DST properly), and set the time zone for all OUR servers to Pacific Time, since that's where we're located (for our clients, we set the timezone to their preference).

Then we do synchronization hourly.

Frankly, if everyone did this, it would be a lot easier to track spammers, hackers, etc., between systems, based on log entries.

Originally posted by S2S-Robert
well I'm having the time issue, so I'm going to start looking for a sync server in my time-zone :D
As I mentioned above, the server should be close by for the most accuracy, but it really doesn't have to be in your time-zone.

Note that if you're in the US you can use a US-government-run time-server without notifying them, but otherwise, even for public time-servers, it's considered proper netiquette to notify the system admin when you start using their server.

See:

http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/servers.html

which was last modified September 26, 2003.

Jeff