I am currently running slackware 12.1 with apache,squid,dansguardian. I have looked at the time of the server and it is set an hour ahead and now daylight savings time is coming upon us. How do I set this so it automatically syncs with a clock. Don't really want a reply of read the man pages. If I understood the man page of changing the date I probably wouldn't ask the question.
Thanks in advance.

vadder

One way is to use ntpdate.

Just set up a cron job to sync once per day or even once per week if your clock is fairly accurate.

It's as simple as 'ntpdate timeserver.isp.com'

A list of servers can be found here http://support.ntp.org/bin/view/Servers/WebHome

Using NTP is the proper way to do it but since you don't want to RTFM I won't bore you with the details.

thanks for the quick reply. I am new to slackware I understand how cronjobs work but how would I write one to sync to server somewhere? Could you give me an example? Have a lot of server and the time is one hour ahead. I just want to be able to have all servers with the right time. Without having to type date MMDDHHMMYYYYSS in all of them. Is there a directory in slackware that I can go to and find a config file to do this also?

vadder

In Slackware, the typical method for setting the system clock is as root run the timeconfig utility. From there you can configure the system clock and time zone.

Be sure to have the latest timezone package patches installed as they contain the information needed for all the various time zones.

If you run KDE, then after running timeconfig, open the KDE Control Center, select System Administration, then select Date & Time. Select the Administrator Mode button and then configure the date and clock. The utility should already be synced with the settings created by the timeconfig utility. However, there is a check box in the KDE utility to automatically set the clock. You can use that option to keep the system clock synced. Yet if you are running the box as a server, then as suggested by mRgOBLIN, use ntpdate to keep your clock synced. Or run the ntp daemon.

Regardless of how you choose to sync the clock, you should first run timeconfig.

Good point Woodsman. It is important that you set the timezone correctly and a good idea to manually set the clock before setting up something automatic.

will get your clock synced once the TimeZone is correct.

If you have lots of servers then you should really set up one that syncs to an outside source and set all the others to sync from that.
I guess a HowTo on setting up NTP would be useful... I'll put it on my ToDo list.

Perhaps the following will help?

Configuring the NTP Daemon

Damn no strikethrough option in the bbcode here