Index · Directives systemd 257~rc3

Name

systemd-timedated.service, systemd-timedated — Time and date bus mechanism

Synopsis

systemd-timedated.service

/usr/lib/systemd/systemd-timedated

Description

systemd-timedated.service is a system service that may be used as a mechanism to change the system clock and timezone, as well as to enable/disable network time synchronization. systemd-timedated is automatically activated on request and terminates itself when it is unused.

The tool timedatectl(1) is a command line client to this service.

systemd-timedated currently offers access to the following four settings:

  • The system time

  • The system timezone

  • A boolean controlling whether the system RTC is in local or UTC timezone

  • Whether the time synchronization service is enabled/started or disabled/stopped, see next section.

See org.freedesktop.timedate1(5) and org.freedesktop.LogControl1(5) for information about the D-Bus API.

List of network time synchronization services

systemd-timedated will look for files with a ".list" extension in ntp-units.d/ directories. Each file is parsed as a list of unit names, one per line. Empty lines and lines with comments ("#") are ignored. Files are read from /usr/lib/systemd/ntp-units.d/ and the corresponding directories under /etc/, /run/, /usr/local/lib/. Files in /etc/ override files with the same name in /run/, /usr/local/lib/, and /usr/lib/. Files in /run/ override files with the same name under /usr/. Packages should install their configuration files in /usr/lib/ (distribution packages) or /usr/local/lib/ (local installs).

Example 1. ntp-units.d/ entry for systemd-timesyncd

# /usr/lib/systemd/ntp-units.d/80-systemd-timesync.list
systemd-timesyncd.service

If the environment variable $SYSTEMD_TIMEDATED_NTP_SERVICES is set, systemd-timedated will parse the contents of that variable as a colon-separated list of unit names. When set, this variable overrides the file-based list described above.

Example 2. An override that specifies that chronyd should be used if available

SYSTEMD_TIMEDATED_NTP_SERVICES=chronyd.service:systemd-timesyncd.service

See Also

systemd(1), timedatectl(1), localtime(5), hwclock(8), systemd-timesyncd(8), org.freedesktop.timedate1(5)