timedatectl — Control the system time and date
timedatectl [OPTIONS...] {COMMAND}
timedatectl may be used to query and change the system clock and its settings.
Use systemd-firstboot(1) to initialize the system time zone for mounted (but not booted) system images.
timedatectl may be used to show the current status of systemd-timesyncd.service(8).
The following options are understood:
--no-ask-password
¶Do not query the user for authentication for privileged operations.
--adjust-system-clock
¶If set-local-rtc is invoked and this option is passed, the system clock is synchronized from the RTC again, taking the new setting into account. Otherwise, the RTC is synchronized from the system clock.
--monitor
¶If timesync-status is invoked and this option is passed, then timedatectl monitors the status of systemd-timesyncd.service(8) and updates the outputs. Use Ctrl-C to terminate the monitoring.
-a
, -all
¶When showing properties of systemd-timesyncd.service(8), show all properties regardless of whether they are set or not.
-p
, --property=
¶When showing properties of
systemd-timesyncd.service(8),
limit display to certain properties as specified as argument. If not specified, all set properties are shown.
The argument should be a property name, such as "ServerName
". If specified more than once,
all properties with the specified names are shown.
--value
¶When printing properties with show-timesync, only print the value, and skip the
property name and "=
".
-H
, --host=
¶Execute the operation remotely. Specify a hostname, or a
username and hostname separated by "@
", to
connect to. The hostname may optionally be suffixed by a
container name, separated by ":
", which
connects directly to a specific container on the specified
host. This will use SSH to talk to the remote machine manager
instance. Container names may be enumerated with
machinectl -H
HOST
.
-M
, --machine=
¶Execute operation on a local container. Specify a container name to connect to.
-h
, --help
¶--version
¶--no-pager
¶Do not pipe output into a pager.
The following commands are understood:
Show current settings of the system clock and RTC,
including whether network time synchronization through
systemd-timesyncd.service
is active. Even if it is
inactive, a different service might still synchronize the clock.
If no command is specified, this is the implied default.
Show the same information as status
, but in machine readable form.
This command is intended to be used whenever computer-parsable output is required.
Use status
if you are looking for formatted human-readable output.
By default, empty properties are suppressed. Use --all
to show those too.
To select specific properties to show, use --property=
.
Set the system clock to the specified time. This will also update the RTC time accordingly. The time may be specified in the format "2012-10-30 18:17:16".
Set the system time zone to the specified
value. Available timezones can be listed with
list-timezones. If the RTC is configured to
be in the local time, this will also update the RTC time. This
call will alter the /etc/localtime
symlink. See
localtime(5)
for more information.
List available time zones, one per line. Entries from the list can be set as the system timezone with set-timezone.
Takes a boolean argument. If
"0
", the system is configured to maintain the
RTC in universal time. If "1
", it will
maintain the RTC in local time instead. Note that maintaining
the RTC in the local timezone is not fully supported and will
create various problems with time zone changes and daylight
saving adjustments. If at all possible, keep the RTC in UTC
mode. Note that invoking this will also synchronize the RTC
from the system clock, unless
--adjust-system-clock
is passed (see above).
This command will change the 3rd line of
/etc/adjtime
, as documented in
hwclock(8).
Takes a boolean argument. Controls whether network time synchronization is active
and enabled (if available). If the argument is true, this enables and starts the first existed
service listed in the environment variable $SYSTEMD_TIMEDATED_NTP_SERVICES
of systemd-timedated.service
. If the argument is false, then this disables and
stops the all services listed in $SYSTEMD_TIMEDATED_NTP_SERVICES
.
The following commands are specific to systemd-timesyncd.service(8).
Show current status of
systemd-timesyncd.service(8).
If --monitor
is specified, then this will monitor the status updates.
Show the same information as timesync-status
, but in machine readable form.
This command is intended to be used whenever computer-parsable output is required.
Use timesync-status
if you are looking for formatted human-readable output.
By default, empty properties are suppressed. Use --all
to show those too.
To select specific properties to show, use --property=
.
$SYSTEMD_PAGER
¶Pager to use when --no-pager
is not given; overrides
$PAGER
. If neither $SYSTEMD_PAGER
nor $PAGER
are set, a
set of well-known pager implementations are tried in turn, including
less(1) and
more(1), until one is found. If
no pager implementation is discovered no pager is invoked. Setting this environment variable to an empty string
or the value "cat
" is equivalent to passing --no-pager
.
$SYSTEMD_LESS
¶Override the options passed to less (by default
"FRSXMK
").
$SYSTEMD_LESSCHARSET
¶Override the charset passed to less (by default "utf-8
", if
the invoking terminal is determined to be UTF-8 compatible).
$SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE
¶Takes a boolean argument. When true, the "secure" mode of the pager is enabled; if
false, disabled. If $SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE
is not set at all, secure mode is enabled
if the effective UID is not the same as the owner of the login session, see geteuid(2) and
sd_pid_get_owner_uid(3).
In secure mode, LESSSECURE=1
will be set when invoking the pager, and the pager shall
disable commands that open or create new files or start new subprocesses. When
$SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE
is not set at all, pagers which are not known to implement
secure mode will not be used. (Currently only
less(1) implements
secure mode.)
Note: when commands are invoked with elevated privileges, for example under sudo(8) or
pkexec(1), care
must be taken to ensure that unintended interactive features are not enabled. "Secure" mode for the
pager may be enabled automatically as describe above. Setting SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE=0
or not removing it from the inherited environment allows the user to invoke arbitrary commands. Note
that if the $SYSTEMD_PAGER
or $PAGER
variables are to be
honoured, $SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE
must be set too. It might be reasonable to completly
disable the pager using --no-pager
instead.
Show current settings:
$ timedatectl Local time: Thu 2017-09-21 16:08:56 CEST Universal time: Thu 2017-09-21 14:08:56 UTC RTC time: Thu 2017-09-21 14:08:56 Time zone: Europe/Warsaw (CEST, +0200) System clock synchronized: yes NTP service: active RTC in local TZ: no
Enable network time synchronization:
$ timedatectl set-ntp true ==== AUTHENTICATING FOR org.freedesktop.timedate1.set-ntp === Authentication is required to control whether network time synchronization shall be enabled. Authenticating as: user Password: ******** ==== AUTHENTICATION COMPLETE ===
$ systemctl status systemd-timesyncd.service ● systemd-timesyncd.service - Network Time Synchronization Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/systemd-timesyncd.service; enabled) Active: active (running) since Mo 2015-03-30 14:20:38 CEST; 5s ago Docs: man:systemd-timesyncd.service(8) Main PID: 595 (systemd-timesyn) Status: "Using Time Server 216.239.38.15:123 (time4.google.com)." CGroup: /system.slice/systemd-timesyncd.service └─595 /usr/lib/systemd/systemd-timesyncd …
Show current status of systemd-timesyncd.service(8):
$ timedatectl timesync-status Server: 216.239.38.15 (time4.google.com) Poll interval: 1min 4s (min: 32s; max 34min 8s) Leap: normal Version: 4 Stratum: 1 Reference: GPS Precision: 1us (-20) Root distance: 335us (max: 5s) Offset: +316us Delay: 349us Jitter: 0 Packet count: 1 Frequency: -8.802ppm