How to stop automatic time update via terminal?

This question shows how to stop automatic time update (and switch to manual):

How to stop automatic time update?

I want to do this exact thing but I can only ssh onto my machine so I need to make this change through the terminal. Is there any way to do this?

7

3 Answers

GNOME Automatic Date & Time doesn't use the ntp service, installable via sudo apt-get install ntp. Therefore stopping or uninstalling the service doesn't help.

Systemd timedatectl is used, therefore one command to switch off

timedatectl set-ntp 0

and one command to switch on

timedatectl set-ntp 1

---

Example

% timedatectl set-ntp 1

or via timedatectl status

% timedatectl status Local time: Do 2015-10-08 18:17:17 CEST Universal time: Do 2015-10-08 16:17:17 UTC RTC time: Do 2015-10-08 16:17:17 Time zone: Europe/Berlin (CEST, +0200) NTP enabled: no
NTP synchronized: yes RTC in local TZ: no DST active: yes Last DST change: DST began at So 2015-03-29 01:59:59 CET So 2015-03-29 03:00:00 CEST Next DST change: DST ends (the clock jumps one hour backwards) at So 2015-10-25 02:59:59 CEST So 2015-10-25 02:00:00 CET
% timedatectl set-ntp 1
% timedatectl status Local time: Do 2015-10-08 18:17:35 CEST Universal time: Do 2015-10-08 16:17:35 UTC RTC time: Do 2015-10-08 16:17:35 Time zone: Europe/Berlin (CEST, +0200) NTP enabled: yes
NTP synchronized: yes RTC in local TZ: no DST active: yes Last DST change: DST began at So 2015-03-29 01:59:59 CET So 2015-03-29 03:00:00 CEST Next DST change: DST ends (the clock jumps one hour backwards) at So 2015-10-25 02:59:59 CEST So 2015-10-25 02:00:00 CET

2

On a systemd operating system like Ubuntu 15.04 use the timedatectl utility, which makes the same Desktop Bus RPC calls as the GNOME control centre utility does:

timedatectl set-ntp false

Further reading

• timedatectl. Ubuintu 15.04 manual pages. Canonical.
• timedatectl. systemd manual pages. Freedesktop.org.

What you are looking for is not ntpd which is not installed by default. It's an if-up.d script which run time update whenever a network interface activated.

dconf watch / shows nothing but inotifywait -m -r /etc/ will do.

/etc/network/if-up.d/ MOVED_FROM ntpdate
/etc/network/if-up.d/ MOVED_TO ntpdate.disabled

It belongs to ntpdate package.

$ dpkg -S /etc/network/if-up.d/ntpdate
ntpdate: /etc/network/if-up.d/ntpdate

So to disable time update, rename that file same as the control center does:

sudo mv /etc/network/if-up.d/ntpdate /etc/network/if-up.d/ntpdate.disabled

1

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Sign up using Google Sign up using Facebook Sign up using Email and Password Submit

Post as a guest

Post Your Answer Discard

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy