Problems with Time management

Product support balenaOS
1

Hi all,

its my first time using balena and im having a lot of troubles setting time in my devices. I 've read Time management docs without luck. For example, the doc say “Balena devices make use of the systemd-timesyncd service to keep the system time synchronized” but when i try “systemctl status systemd-timesyncd” i get “Unit systemd-timesyncd.service could not be found.”

Could you guys please help me? I need to setup the correct time for my apps.

Thank you!

2

Hey,

So, in balenaOS 2.29 at least, we are using Chrony to do NTP time sync. You can see details like so:

root@c562c95:~# systemctl status chronyd   
● chronyd.service - NTP client/server
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/chronyd.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
  Drop-In: /etc/systemd/system/chronyd.service.d
           └─chronyd.conf
   Active: active (running) since Wed 2019-02-06 15:32:18 UTC; 1 weeks 5 days ago
     Docs: man:chronyd(8)
           man:chrony.conf(5)
 Main PID: 640 (chronyd)
   CGroup: /system.slice/chronyd.service
           └─640 /usr/sbin/chronyd -s -d

Feb 06 15:32:18 localhost systemd[1]: Started NTP client/server.
Feb 06 15:32:18 localhost chronyd[640]: 2019-02-06T15:32:18Z chronyd version 3.2 starting (+CMDMON +NTP +REFCLOCK +RTC -PRIVDROP -SCFILTER -SECHASH -SIGND +ASYNCDNS +IPV6 -DEBUG)
Feb 15 15:48:44 localhost chronyd[640]: 2019-02-15T15:48:44Z System time restored from driftfile
Feb 15 15:48:44 localhost chronyd[640]: 2019-02-15T15:48:44Z Frequency 3.897 +/- 0.836 ppm read from /var/lib/chrony/drift
Feb 15 15:48:59 c562c95 chronyd[640]: 2019-02-15T15:48:59Z Selected source 94.16.116.137
Feb 18 13:59:55 c562c95 chronyd[640]: 2019-02-15T15:48:59Z System clock wrong by 252655.250583 seconds, adjustment started
Feb 18 13:59:55 c562c95 chronyd[640]: 2019-02-18T13:59:55Z System clock was stepped by 252655.250583 seconds
Feb 18 13:59:56 c562c95 chronyd[640]: 2019-02-18T13:59:56Z Selected source 212.18.3.18
Feb 18 14:02:06 c562c95 chronyd[640]: 2019-02-18T14:02:06Z Selected source 188.39.213.7

Your application containers should have the correct time, as long as the host is sync’d correctly.

1 Like
3

Hi @richbayliss, thank you so much for your support. This is the status of my chrony daemon,

root@124aff8:~# systemctl status chronyd
Warning: The unit file, source configuration file or drop-ins of chronyd>
● chronyd.service - NTP client/server
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/chronyd.service; enabled; vendor >
Drop-In: /etc/systemd/system/chronyd.service.d
└─chronyd.conf
Active: active (running) since Wed 2019-02-06 15:13:08 UTC; 1 weeks 6>
Docs: man:chronyd(8)
man:chrony.conf(5)

Its indeed working but could you please guide me how can i configure an specific timezone? My local time is 12:13:08 and my app is using the system time (15:13:08).

Thank you very much,
Cristián

4

I solved this using chronyc manual time but the configuration doesn’t persist after reboot.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Cristián

7

Hi,

You can set the timezone in the container as described in the time management docs: https://www.balena.io/docs/reference/OS/time/

There is also an example linked there.

Regards!

1 Like