use timedatectl as sanity check in whonixcheck

[phabricator-migrator]

Information

ID: 332
PHID: PHID-TASK-xa6onn4jgszqvqu3mlmi
Author: Patrick
Status at Migration Time: resolved
Priority at Migration Time: Normal

Description

Parsing information by timedatectl.

Comments

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HulaHoop

2015-05-28 21:57:18 UTC

timedatectl’s output looks like the standard date format extracted from http headers and so can be processed with similar logic to sdwdate:

timedatectl Local time: Mon 2013-09-16 19:30:24 CEST Universal time: Mon 2013-09-16 17:30:24 UTC

You can set system date and time similar to how date --set works.

timedatectl set-time HH:MM:SS

timedatectl set-time YYYY-MM-DD

timedatectl set-timezone time_zone

Chapter 3. Configuring the Date and Time Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 | Red Hat Customer Portal

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Is the timedatectl sanity check going to be used besides anon-tordate plugin?

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Patrick

2015-05-28 22:18:39 UTC

whonixcheck only. Similar to check_kvmclock. Just testing to see that systemd’s time synchronization feature isn’t active.

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HulaHoop

2015-05-28 23:55:50 UTC

$ timedatectl

just gives the system time and doesn’t set anything.

Do you know if it can be disabled? I’m not sure if it can be disabled like kvmclock, but it won’t interfere with the system time unless instructed. Additional feature of automatic NTP time syncing by timedatectl is not enabled by default. To run it would need :

timedatectl set-ntp true

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Patrick

2015-05-29 00:00:57 UTC

! In T332#5074, @HulaHoop wrote:
$ timedatectl

just gives the system time and doesn’t set anything.

And that’s fine.

Will just check this:

NTP enabled: no
NTP synchronized: no

And perhaps:

RTC in local TZ: 

And perhaps:

DST active: 

Do you know if it can be disabled? I’m not sure if it can be disabled like kvmclock, but it won’t interfere with the system time unless instructed. Additional feature of automatic NTP time syncing by timedatectl is not enabled by default. To run it would need :

timedatectl set-ntp true

Yes, but checking it’s not is the whole todo here. Nothing fancy.

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HulaHoop

2015-06-21 20:38:03 UTC

timedatectl

Service file is at this path:
/usr/lib/systemd/system/systemd-timesyncd.service

Service can be set to disabled at boot.

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Patrick

2015-06-21 21:30:51 UTC

It’s not enabled by default, fortunately. If it was, we might likely be able to create a file /etc/systemd/system/systemd-timesyncd.d/30_whonix.conf with the following content.

## This file is part of Whonix.
## Copyright (C) 2012 - 2015 Patrick Schleizer <adrelanos@riseup.net>
## See the file COPYING for copying conditions.

[Unit]
ConditionPathExists=!/usr/share/anon-gw-base-files/gateway
ConditionPathExists=!/usr/share/anon-ws-base-files/workstation

Or better in /lib/system/systemd-timesyncd.d/30_whonix.conf?

We could do this anyhow to be on the safe side also in far future. I am not sure in which package adding this would be appropriate.

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Patrick

2015-07-10 16:56:35 UTC

parse output of timedatectl as sanity check in whonixcheck to make sure systemd NTP is disabled as well as timezone is set to UTC - https://phabricator.whonix.org/T332:
https://github.com/Whonix/whonixcheck/commit/07f5922b48447a0a9828c708bde1c18a12c20ca5