systemd-timesyncd.service(8) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | FILES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

SYSTEMD-T....SERVICE(8) systemd-timesyncd.service SYSTEMD-T....SERVICE(8)

NAME         top

       systemd-timesyncd.service, systemd-timesyncd - Network Time
       Synchronization

SYNOPSIS         top

       systemd-timesyncd.service

       /usr/lib/systemd/systemd-timesyncd

DESCRIPTION         top

       systemd-timesyncd is a system service that may be used to
       synchronize the local system clock with a remote Network Time
       Protocol (NTP) server. It also saves the local time to disk every
       time the clock has been synchronized and uses this to possibly
       advance the system realtime clock on subsequent reboots to ensure
       it (roughly) monotonically advances even if the system lacks a
       battery-buffered RTC chip.

       The systemd-timesyncd service implements SNTP only. This
       minimalistic service will step the system clock for large offsets
       or slowly adjust it for smaller deltas. Complex use cases that
       require full NTP support (and where SNTP is not sufficient) are
       not covered by systemd-timesyncd.

       The NTP servers contacted are determined from the global settings
       in timesyncd.conf(5), the per-link static settings in .network
       files, and the per-link dynamic settings received over DHCP. See
       systemd.network(5) for further details.

       timedatectl(1)'s set-ntp command may be used to enable and start,
       or disable and stop this service.

       timedatectl(1)'s timesync-status or show-timesync command can be
       used to show the current status of this service.

       systemd-timesyncd initialization delays the start of units that
       are ordered after time-set.target (see systemd.special(7) for
       details) until the local time has been updated from
       /var/lib/systemd/timesync/clock (see below) in order to make it
       roughly monotonic. It does not delay other units until
       synchronization with an accurate reference time sources has been
       reached. Use systemd-time-wait-sync.service(8) to achieve that,
       which will delay start of units that are ordered after
       time-sync.target until synchronization to an accurate reference
       clock is reached.

       systemd and systemd-timesyncd advance the system clock to the
       "epoch" (the lowest date above which the system clock time is
       assumed to be set correctly). See "System clock epoch" section in
       systemd(1) for details.  systemd will set the clock when
       initializing, but /var/lib/systemd/timesync/clock might not yet be
       available at that point.  systemd-timesyncd will advance the clock
       when it is started and notices that the system clock is before the
       modification time of /var/lib/systemd/timesync/clock.

FILES         top

       /var/lib/systemd/timesync/clock
           The modification time ("mtime") of this file is updated on
           each successful NTP synchronization or after each
           SaveIntervalSec= time interval, as specified in
           timesyncd.conf(5).

           If present, the modification time of this file is used for the
           epoch by systemd(1) and systemd-timesyncd.service.

           Added in version 219.

       /run/systemd/timesync/synchronized
           A file that is touched on each successful synchronization to
           assist systemd-time-wait-sync and other applications in
           detecting synchronization to an accurate reference clock.

           Added in version 239.

SEE ALSO         top

       systemd(1), timesyncd.conf(5), systemd.network(5),
       systemd-networkd.service(8), systemd-time-wait-sync.service(8),
       systemd.special(7), timedatectl(1), localtime(5), hwclock(8)

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the systemd (systemd system and service
       manager) project.  Information about the project can be found at
       ⟨http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd⟩.  If you have a
       bug report for this manual page, see
       ⟨http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/#bugreports⟩.
       This page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/systemd/systemd.git⟩ on 2025-02-02.  (At that
       time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2025-02-02.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is
       a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

systemd 258~devel                                 SYSTEMD-T....SERVICE(8)

Pages that refer to this page: systemd(1)timedatectl(1)org.freedesktop.timesync1(5)systemd.network(5)timesyncd.conf(5)systemd.directives(7)systemd.index(7)systemd.special(7)systemd-timedated.service(8)systemd-time-wait-sync.service(8)