Documentation< Previous | Contents | Next >
4.1.1. Configuring timedatectl and timesyncd
The current status of time and time configuration via timedatectl and timesyncd can be checked with
timedatectl status.
$ timedatectl status
Local time: Fr 2018-02-23 08:47:13 UTC
Universal time: Fr 2018-02-23 08:47:13 UTC
RTC time: Fr 2018-02-23 08:47:13
Time zone: Etc/UTC (UTC, +0000) System clock synchronized: yes
systemd-timesyncd.service active: yes
RTC in local TZ: no
If chrony is running it will automatically switch to: [...]
systemd-timesyncd.service active: no
Via timedatectl an admin can control the timezone, how the system clock should relate to the hwclock and if permanent synronization should be enabled or not. See man timedatectl for more details.
timesyncd itself is still a normal service, so you can check its status also more in detail via.
$ systemctl status systemd-timesyncd
systemd-timesyncd.service - Network Time Synchronization
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/systemd-timesyncd.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Fri 2018-02-23 08:55:46 UTC; 10s ago Docs: man:systemd-timesyncd.service(8)
Main PID: 3744 (systemd-timesyn)
Status: "Synchronized to time server 91.189.89.198:123 (ntp.ubuntu.com)." Tasks: 2 (limit: 4915)
CGroup: /system.slice/systemd-timesyncd.service
|-3744 /lib/systemd/systemd-timesyncd
Feb 23 08:55:46 bionic-test systemd[1]: Starting Network Time Synchronization... Feb 23 08:55:46 bionic-test systemd[1]: Started Network Time Synchronization.
Feb 23 08:55:46 bionic-test systemd-timesyncd[3744]: Synchronized to time server 91.189.89.198:123 (ntp.ubuntu.com).
The nameserver to fetch time for timedatectl and timesyncd from can be specified in /etc/systemd/ timesyncd.conf and additional config files can be stored in /etc/systemd/timesyncd.conf.d/. The entries for NTP= and FallbackNTP= are space separated lists. See man timesyncd.conf for more.