How to sync the time to network with timedatectl on Ubuntu 18.04?

Question

I've installed the OS and the time is incorrect.

The timedatectl shows:

       System clock synchronized: no
systemd-timesyncd.service active: yes
                 RTC in local TZ: no

How to force it to sync now?

N0rbert · Accepted Answer · 2018-07-23 10:07:28Z

13

From man timedatectl all you need is to enable NTP-sync.

sudo timedatectl set-ntp true

then it do the rest automatically.

If it does not work check status of systemd-timesyncd.service

systemctl status systemd-timesyncd.service

and restart it

sudo systemctl restart systemd-timesyncd.service

And then check again:

$ timedatectl
...
       System clock synchronized: yes
systemd-timesyncd.service active: yes
                 RTC in local TZ: no

answered Jul 23 '18 at 10:07

N0rbert

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2

The status of systemd-timesyncd.service was useful - helped to see the problem with the server connectivity. – Velkan Jul 24 '18 at 9:22
On Ubuntu 18.04 this doesn't work... can someone please verify? – lewis4u Jun 13 '19 at 11:08
@lewis4u: it works for me in Ubuntu18.04, the systemctl part. Does your firewall allow you to access the NTP servers? – HongboZhu Jul 2 '19 at 14:18
@lewis4u: are time servers configured? can you check /etc/systemd/timesyncd.conf ? You can see what time servers are used using the above systemctl status command. Indeed, on my 18.04 synchronization was off and setting set-ntp to on did not work until I set time servers. – Nik O'Lai Aug 23 '19 at 12:23
Inside time servers everything is commented out... only [Time] is not – lewis4u Aug 23 '19 at 13:00

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