Setting clock on pink pogoplug

I've go ta clean (brand new) install of Debian on my pogo plug here.

root@debian:~# cat /etc/issue
Debian GNU/Linux 6.0 \n \l

Since there's no RTC the clock is 1970. I tried using ntp but it failed for reasons uknown. So I tried using hwclock to set the clock…

root@debian:~# hwclock --set --date='07/13/11 10:56:00' --localtime --debug
Issuing date command: date --date="07/13/11 10:56:00" +seconds-into-epoch=%s
response from date command = seconds-into-epoch=1310568960

date string 07/13/11 10:56:00 equates to 1310568960 seconds since 1969.
hwclock from util-linux-ng 2.17.2
hwclock: Open of /dev/rtc failed, errno=2: No such file or directory.
No usable clock interface found.
Cannot access the Hardware Clock via any known method.

That seems to by why NTP is failing. if I do `ntpq -p hostname`, that gives me data, so it's not a connectivity or firewall issue.

How do you get the time to set (even in a volatile state) when the RTC isn't found?

You can't use hwclock. That's trying to update the rtc. Just use "date --set". And are you sure ntp isn't working? What's the output of just "date"? Maybe you don't have the correct timezone? Use "dpkg-reconfigure tzdata" to fix it.

TZ is setup correctly

When I run date:

root@debian:~# date
Wed Dec 31 19:08:13 EST 1969


I ran NTP manually and used ntpd, date never changed.

ntp doesn't like large jumps in time. Instead, to set the clock initially run:

/etc/init.d/ntp stop
ntpdate-debian
/etc/init.d/ntp start

Ah! You started ntpd manually so the init script (/etc/init.d/ntp) didn't run. The debian init script allows ntpd to update the clock the first time regardless of the time difference by using the -g option.

Interesting… thanks I'll try that.