Time Synchronization Command line in MacOS Big Sur

[occamsrazor]

Thanks for the feedback. My situation isn't really critical, I was just trying to sync the time from a Mac to an NTP server running on a pfSense router and encountered some oddities that I couldn't work out.
ChronyControl does seem to do the job. Do you need to keep the app running or does the daemon do its job automatically in the background? If so how frequently does it sync?

 

[rhcohen]

The daemon does its job automatically. I think you can set how frequently it syncs.

 

[Feek]

ChronyControl works perfectly and it was especially tweaked so that if the clock was a few seconds out after waking from sleep, it made the change very quickly.

I wrote about it in my blog here.

 

[gustafsson-KLUHV]

Hi all, I have been able to force the time update by killing the process named "timed" (from Activity Viewer or Terminal). The process was then respawn automatically by the system, and then time sync actually happened. My clock was off by more than 6 seconds, possibly never synced since the last macOS 11.2.2 update.

pkill timed works perfectly for me. Thanks!

 

[tstimper]

Thankfully I found the thread. I only could fix this with ChronyControl. It is perfect for me, I can configure it with all of my local timeservers and it only use those which are available.
Thank you developers of ChronyControl.

A sidenote to Apple. You should take such issues as the sometimes broken time sync more seriously.

Perhaps fixing this costs you two days of development and testing, ok, perhaps a week. But for your users/customers something like that cost them in summary millions of hours trial and error fixing...

 

[wormth]

Unfortunately with the latest update of MacOS Big Sur, the problem persists. Apple has also taken away the option of customizing the Time Server in Date & Time module. The default is now set time.apple.com and it doesn't accept any other time server....

On Big Sur (11.2.3 tested), the time server can be changed in the Date & Time module: https://grok.lsu.edu/article.aspx?articleid=8102

1) System Preferences --> Date & Time

2) Click the lock and enter password

3) Check the box for "Set date & time automatically"

4) Select the drop-down menu and type the name of your prefered server and press ENTER

5) It is important to press ENTER on your keyboard after typing the server name, otherwise your change won't take effect.

6) Click the lock again to finish

 

[gilby101]

the time server can be changed

The issue in this thread is not the particular time server, but rather that the timed daemon is pretty poor at getting your Mac's time close to that of the time server. The daemon is happy with errors of more than a second - in some cases lots more. Different software is required if you want time to be more accurate - hence the use of ChronyControl which makes it easy to use the chronyd daemon instead. Chronyd is an open source sntp client and server.

 

[Feek]

the time server can be changed

Yeah, that wasn't the problem. Thanks though.

 

[volo_pacem]

I used to use the Command [sudo sntp -sS time.apple.com / sudo sntp -sS in.pool.ntp.org] in the Terminal to sync the System Clock in macOS Catalina. It was working just fine. I now see that with the same Command, the Clock offset isn't getting corrected sometimes. Did the sntp daemon change in MacOS Big Sur? Are there any other Command line I could use.

This script works for me and tells me when it was last updated. Paste it in an editor, save as textfile with <name>.
Make it exectutable
chmod +ux ./<name>

and start it as superuser

sudo ./name

If you want to see it working you can reduce the delay after the sleep command from 1200 seconds (20mins) to a few seconds in the sleep command.
I had the problem with the nist server no longer responding so I took the pool.ntp.org.
If you want to see it working, go to clock in settings, unclick autoset and and change the time from the proper time manually - you can then see it working (hopefully).

#!/bin/bash
# Infinite for loop
for (( ; ; ))


do
sntp -S pool.ntp.org
now=$(date +"%T")
echo "Current time : $now"
echo "CTRL+C to exit"
sleep 1200 && command-to-do-after-twenty-minutes
done

 

[Feek]

MacRumors comes through again I need precise time sync to run the Amatuer Radio digital modes FT-4 and FT-8. Your mention of Chrony Control gives me the info I need to load it. Thanks.

Glad you found it and if you followed the link to my blog, you'll see my callsign. I hope we manage to work one day

73.

 

[transmaster]

Sadly as I mention on another thread Chrony Control does not work with Sonoma 14.0. I sent a note to its support we will see what happens.

 

[gilby101]

Sadly as I mention on another thread Chrony Control does not work with Sonoma 14.0

Works fine for me (Intel Macs).

This https://qso365.co.uk/2021/04/accura...c-running-macos-big-sur-for-ft8-ft4-and-wspr/ says it continues to run with Sonoma and Apple silicon. This is @Feek 's blog.

 

[Feek]

Sadly as I mention on another thread Chrony Control does not work with Sonoma 14.0. I sent a note to its support we will see what happens.

It’s working perfectly fine for me on M1 Studio and M2 MBA, both with Sonoma.

 

[transmaster]

I am running FT-8 mode right now on My Mac Studio, just had an exchange with a Ham Radio op in Southern Chile running about 35 Watts. I have WSJT-X going with Grid Square to do the logs and tracking. The time base as kept by this Mac is plenty good enough. Time reports my Mac is holding at less than 0.040 of a second.

 

[transmaster]

Curious about this command.
sudo sntp -sS time.nist.gov
Is this a one time time check or does it run in the background continuously?

Here is what I get when I run it.

 

[transmaster]

Here is the Apple time server command.
sudo sntp -sS time.apple.com

With this command this is what I see on the terminal display. It is obvious which one is better.

 

[transmaster]

The time deviation exactly matches what the Time.gov site shows on the minus side of the clock offset on the Mac Studio.

 

[Feek]

Here is the Apple time server command.
sudo sntp -sS time.apple.com

Yet again, I'm going to refer you to my ham radio blog.

This is the method I used to recommend, see here. However, tt does nothing from Big Sur onwards. I can't stress this enough, it does nothing, it does not work. Hence why I (and others) suggested ChronyControl. This is all detailed in the first few posts of this thread.

 

[transmaster]

Yet again, I'm going to refer you to my ham radio blog.

This is the method I used to recommend, see here. However, tt does nothing from Big Sur onwards. I can't stress this enough, it does nothing, it does not work. Hence why I (and others) suggested ChronyControl. This is all detailed in the first few posts of this thread.

It is a moot point now. In a "hope springs eternaL" move I loaded Chrony Control again. Big surprise it loaded up normally and is running as it should. What has changed is Sonoma 17.1 apparently this upgrade fixed whatever CC was having a problem with. All is working in time land. 😁

 

[Feek]

Good, hopefully you're sorted now.

 

[transmaster]

I was thinking about this situation with Chrony Control and back in the Windows world when I had a problem like this and I was told similar things about it working with others one of the thing I could have tried is to repair my Window OS. You can do this without altering anything. It goes through and repairs anything it finds wrong. If you have any registry entries those all go away but getting a properly working OS is worth it. There is no way I know of to do this with macOS. It is obvious now something was amiss in my OS that was causing the problem with CC and was fixed with Sonoma 17.1. I sure wish I knew what it fixed.

 

[Feek]

In theory the operating system can't get damaged because it's in protected space and if one byte changes, it won't boot. A few versions of macOS ago, there was a 'combo' update you could run which will repair system files but it shouldn't be needed any more.

 

[transmaster]

In theory the operating system can't get damaged because it's in protected space and if one byte changes, it won't boot. A few versions of macOS ago, there was a 'combo' update you could run which will repair system files but it shouldn't be needed any more.

I come from the Windows world were this sort of thing is commonplace. I came to macOS because this. All I can say with the upgrade to 17.1 Chrony Control is running normally now.