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I am in process of updating the Solaris Machine's System Date and Time.... I am using the following command.... Loginned as root........

# date -u 062800002010
Mon Jun 28 00:00:00 GMT 2010
# date
Sun Feb 28 05:30:02 IST 2010

As seen above,, when i fire the "date" command again.... the new updated date doesn't get reflected......... Please let me know on what could be the issue.......


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What says "zdump -v IST" ? –  jlliagre Jun 30 '10 at 0:02
Why aren't you using NTP? If not the NTP daemon, you can set it once using ntpdate. I've not had good luck with the date command either... –  Brian Knoblauch Mar 17 '11 at 12:07
Are you in the global zone or another zone? Only the global zone should be able to set the system clock since it's shared by all zones. –  alanc Mar 18 '11 at 2:04

3 Answers 3

The hardware clock seems to be broken or not responding to updates. This could be an OS bug or hardware failure.

Add the following lines in /etc/system:

set tod_broken=1
set dosynctodr=0

The *tod_broken* parameter will prevent the operating system from attempting to update the hardware clock. The dosynctodr parameter, when set to 0 will stop the operating system from syncing its time from the hardware clock.

These can also be set without rebooting using the following commands:

# echo 'tod_broken/W 1' | mdb -kw
# echo 'dosynctodr/W 0' | mdb -kw

I'd also recommend configuring ntpd to keep your time in sync.

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There is no issue. You are setting UTC date (aka GMT) but are displaying it using a specific timezone that has a 5:30 offset. Where are you located (geographically) ?

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I don't think the timezone can account for a 4 month difference. –  pra Jun 29 '10 at 18:52
I overlook that detail, probably because the hours are emphasized but not the date. Anyway, nothing forbids to create a bogus timezone which is ~4 month off. Just set its time offset to around -2880 hours and you are set. –  jlliagre Jun 29 '10 at 23:57
I wouldn't say a bogus timezone is a very good solution. It's a cheap hack and it may work for a while but you're gonna run into problems somewhere else. –  Shaun Dewberry Mar 17 '11 at 11:32
I'm not talking about a solution, just about a possible root cause of the issue. –  jlliagre Mar 17 '11 at 14:04

Look again - he is five months off.

Did you su to root, set the time, then exit back to your original process? I do not understand how you got the displays you show. You are connected to the same machine in both of your examples, correct?

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And I'm six month off to comment your reply ;-) It is easy to reproduce the issue by creating a fake timezone with a -2880 hours offset from GMT. –  jlliagre Dec 30 '10 at 3:56

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