Sync time across machines to time server about dotnet-ci

[mmitche]

@iamjasonp Is this typically run as a daemon on Linux or run on-demand?

[iamjasonp]

You can use ntpdate to adjust time on demand, or install ntpd (sudo apt-get install ntp) for continuous correction. Note however that installing ntpd will cause a server to be opened up on the machine too so others can sync time from it - not necessarily desired behaviour.

Using (say) sudo ntpdate 0.pool.ntp.org as a cron job works (I think it's already on-box by default on ubuntu and other distros) but will probably result in more drift compared to ntpd. That said, this drift should be well within our tolerance if we run ntpdate even weekly. Note that ntpdate needs superuser privileges to set the system time.

I personally use ntpd on my box to keep time on my linux boxes because I'm lazy and don't really care about any incoming ntp connections. (the default /etc/ntp.conf is good enough for me)

Using the cron job, be sure to edit the sudoers file to allow sudo without password for ntpdate for whichever user you use to run the time sync.

NINJA EDIT: Added sudo to ntpdate command example above