Manually force date by ntpd instead of ntpdate

[^rooker]

As far as I've read, "ntpdate" is about to be somewhat discontinued and replaced by "ntpd" completely in the future.
"ntpd" is great, but by default it refuses to synchronize time/date if it's offset is too big.

Therefore, I've usually called "ntpdate" once on fresh installs, or when I wanted to manually force re-sync of time/date - and then ran the ntp demon.

Now, here's how you can do the same thing using "ntpd" only:

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$ ntpd -p $TIMESERVER -gq

Replace "$TIMESERVER" by any ntp timeserver you fancy. If you don't have one in house, you may want to try "pool.ntp.org".
The command returns nothing, but it's good to check your time/date afterwards:

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$ date

PS: That also works to fix date/time issues on OpenELEC on a Raspberry Pi

[peter_b]

Short update (Debian based systems, including *Ubuntu):

1) You need to stop the NTP service before

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$ systemctl stop ntp

2) You don't need to provide a timeserver
Since the default ntp configuration on a system contains a list of timeservers, it also works without providing any server:

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$ ntpd -gq

If you get the following error, the NTP service is still running (and binding the port), so it wasn't properly stopped:

3 Nov 12:03:39 ntpd[19073]: ntpd 4.2.8p10@1.3728-o (1): Starting
3 Nov 12:03:39 ntpd[19073]: Command line: ntpd -gq
3 Nov 12:03:39 ntpd[19073]: proto: precision = 0.088 usec (-23)
3 Nov 12:03:39 ntpd[19073]: leapsecond file ('/usr/share/zoneinfo/leap-seconds.list'): good hash signature
3 Nov 12:03:39 ntpd[19073]: leapsecond file ('/usr/share/zoneinfo/leap-seconds.list'): loaded, expire=2021-06-28T00:00:00Z last=2017-01-01T00:00:00Z ofs=37
3 Nov 12:03:39 ntpd[19073]: unable to bind to wildcard address :: - another process may be running - EXITING

3) You need to re-start the NTP service afterwards

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$ systemctl start ntp

Optional: If you want to know if your NTP service is properly running again, use this:

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$ systemctl status ntp

Here's an example output how this should/could look like:

● ntp.service - Network Time Service
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/ntp.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Tue 2020-11-03 12:00:52 UTC; 2s ago
Docs: man:ntpd(8)
Process: 18139 ExecStart=/usr/lib/ntp/ntp-systemd-wrapper (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Main PID: 18159 (ntpd)
Tasks: 2 (limit: 3553)
CGroup: /system.slice/ntp.service
└─18159 /usr/sbin/ntpd -p /var/run/ntpd.pid -g -u 113:116

Nov 03 12:00:52 your_hostname ntpd[18159]: Listen and drop on 0 v6wildcard [::]:123
Nov 03 12:00:52 your_hostname ntpd[18159]: Listen and drop on 1 v4wildcard 0.0.0.0:123
Nov 03 12:00:52 your_hostname ntpd[18159]: Listen normally on 2 lo 127.0.0.1:123
Nov 03 12:00:52 your_hostname ntpd[18159]: Listen normally on 3 enp0s3 94.130.40.108:123
Nov 03 12:00:52 your_hostname ntpd[18159]: Listen normally on 4 lo [::1]:123
Nov 03 12:00:52 your_hostname ntpd[18159]: Listen normally on 5 enp0s3 [fe80::a00fe89:96d2%2]:123
Nov 03 12:00:52 your_hostname ntpd[18159]: Listening on routing socket on fd #22 for interface updates
Nov 03 12:00:53 your_hostname ntpd[18159]: Soliciting pool server 144.76.100.49
Nov 03 12:00:54 your_hostname ntpd[18159]: Soliciting pool server 129.70.132.34
Nov 03 12:00:54 your_hostname ntpd[18159]: Soliciting pool server 176.9.18.143