Concepts

  • International Atomic Time (TAI).
  • Universal Time Coordinated (UTC).
  • Time Zone variable (TZ).

/etc/TIMEZONE

  • Zone Information Compiler (zic).

ZIC

ZIC(1M)

NAME
    zic - time zone information compiler
SYNOPSIS
    zic [ -v] [ -d  directory ] [ -l localtime ] [ -p  posixrules ] [ -L
    leapsecondfilename ] [ -s ] [ -y command ] [ filename ... ]
DESCRIPTION
    Zic reads text from the file(s) named on the command line and creates the
    time conversion information files specified in this input.  If a filename
    is -, the standard input is read.


Network Time Protocol

Download neko_openntpd-3.9p1.tardist from nekoware or download ntp from freeware.sgi.com

chkconfig
ntp        on
timed      off
timeslave  off


edit /etc/ntp.conf add a server line for the timeserver you want to use.

See NTP.org site for more information or download ntp source from the above ntp.org site and compile and install it.

NOTE: neko_openntd seems to install a different package than specified above which is possibly the SGI Freeware version. Instead, I had to:

chkconfig neko_ntpd on

and edit /usr/nekoware/etc/ntpd.conf. You may alway wish to force a service restart (without rebooting)

/etc/init.d/neko_ntpd restart

—Squeen 04:11, 28 May 2010 (PDT)

timed

Turn timeslave on:


chkconfig timeslave on


Edit /etc/config/timeslave.options to include a time server:


-H nist1.datum.com


Start it up as root (or reboot if you prefer):


/etc/init.d/network stop; /etc/init.d/network start


And that's it. Every once in a while in your SYSLOG you should see messages like:


Oct 18 00:33:43 5D:Komugi timeslave[230]: date changed from 10/18/04 00:33:33

Troubleshooting

I am running neko_ntpd on a 3200 running IRIX 6.5.30. I am getting the following error message in SYSLOG:

Mar 11 11:09:38 6D:turing ntpd[758]: adjusting local clock by 5148.060434s 
Mar 11 11:09:38 2D:turing ntpd[758]: adjtime failed: Invalid argument 

Has anybody seen this before? Does anybody have a fix for this?

---

Yep - you need manually set your time closer to the actual time first (within a couple minutes is fine). openntpd can't make enormous corrections to the time like that (your clock appears to be off by 1.43 hours at the moment).

it uses adjtime to "adjust the system's notion of the current time, as returned by gettimeofday(3C), advancing or retarding it by the amount of time specified in the struct timeval pointed to by delta." It's not designed for huge leaps; it was designed to make minor adjustments to the clock to keep it in sync by slowing/speeding up the clock.

Also keep in mind we're talking about openntpd here (neko_ntpd), not standard ntpd.

See also

Refer also to the util/timetrim.c program for some older SGI models and UNICOS based Cray super computers in the NTP reference distribution.