Setting the Date and Time for The Beaglebone Black

Note 01/31/2023: This is a redo of a previous post published over a year ago.

One of the things I noticed when I first powered-on my BBB and queried the command line for the date and time, was that both were nowhere near the correct date and time. Using web searches and some trial and error, I found what was needed on the BBB was the Network Time Protocol (NTP) server. With the BBB powered on and an Ethernet cable inserted into the jack, I performed the following actions:

Tunneled into the BBB via SSH:

ssh debian@196.168.0.6

Updated the package index and installed Network Time Protocol server (ntp):

sudo apt update && sudo apt install ntp -y

Issued the following command to start the service:

sudo systemctl restart ntp

Checked the status of the service:

debian@BeagleBone:~$ systemctl status ntp

The immediate console output:

● ntp.service - Network Time Service
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/ntp.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Tue 2023-01-31 20:10:16 MST; 10s ago
       Docs: man:ntpd(8)
    Process: 1809 ExecStart=/usr/lib/ntp/ntp-systemd-wrapper (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
   Main PID: 1815 (ntpd)
      Tasks: 2 (limit: 1023)
     Memory: 664.0K
        CPU: 155ms
     CGroup: /system.slice/ntp.service
             └─1815 /usr/sbin/ntpd -p /var/run/ntpd.pid -g -u 107:115

Jan 31 20:10:16 BeagleBone ntpd[1815]: Listen normally on 7 usb0 [fe80::c6f3:12ff:fe9a:6ef3%3]:123
Jan 31 20:10:16 BeagleBone ntpd[1815]: Listening on routing socket on fd #24 for interface updates
Jan 31 20:10:16 BeagleBone ntpd[1815]: kernel reports TIME_ERROR: 0x41: Clock Unsynchronized
Jan 31 20:10:16 BeagleBone ntpd[1815]: kernel reports TIME_ERROR: 0x41: Clock Unsynchronized
Jan 31 20:10:16 BeagleBone systemd[1]: Started Network Time Service.
Jan 31 20:10:17 BeagleBone ntpd[1815]: Soliciting pool server 37.59.63.125
Jan 31 20:10:18 BeagleBone ntpd[1815]: Soliciting pool server 65.19.142.137
Jan 31 20:10:19 BeagleBone ntpd[1815]: Soliciting pool server 138.236.128.36
Jan 31 20:10:19 BeagleBone ntpd[1815]: Soliciting pool server 104.131.155.175
Jan 31 20:10:20 BeagleBone ntpd[1815]: Soliciting pool server 159.89.86.140

Issued the following command to allow the service to start whenever the BBB boots up:

debian@BeagleBone:~$ sudo systemctl enable ntp

Console output immediately following the previous command:

Synchronizing state of ntp.service with SysV service script with /lib/systemd/systemd-sysv-install.
Executing: /lib/systemd/systemd-sysv-install enable ntp

Then, I set the local time zone data with the following command:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

I followed the prompts to set the time zone for my part of the world. When finished, the console out was this:

Current default time zone: 'US/Arizona'
Local time is now:      Tue Jan 31 20:11:20 MST 2023.
Universal Time is now:  Wed Feb  1 03:11:20 UTC 2023.