Bios Time vs System Time

[gearhead]

I am playing with 9.1.1 RC2. The file server is on a switch with no internet access. I noticed that system time as reported by FreeNas is off by few hours. I rebooted the server and check the bios clock and it showed the time correctly? It seems that FreeNas is not getting the time from hardware clock! is there a way to change the FreeNAS system clock thru command line?

 

[cyberjock]

Its too hard to say. What I would do if you want the time to be accurate is to plug the server into the Internet, setup NTP and let it adjust the clock time and set your time zone correctly.

Then, if its still not correct see what is wrong. There's too many variables to see what is wrong with your setup in the current configuration.

 

[fede2222]

I am playing with 9.1.1 RC2. The file server is on a switch with no internet access. I noticed that system time as reported by FreeNas is off by few hours. I rebooted the server and check the bios clock and it showed the time correctly? It seems that FreeNas is not getting the time from hardware clock! is there a way to change the FreeNAS system clock thru command line?

You change the timezone in System -> Settings -> Timezone in Freenas GUI?

 

[gearhead]

thanks fede2222. I am aware of that. I like to be able to set system clock thru command line if possible.

 

[gpsguy]

Try this

 

[gearhead]

Perfect. Thanks gpsguy

 

[Yatti420]

I asked this awhile back..

Freenas is on UTC?.. BIOS is on local I assume.. Set your date and time to local in freenas.. Leave your BIOS time alone.. Then adjust to compensate for UTC if you want BIOS to autopower on pc..

 

[Brighter]

I just had this problem and googling led me to this page... turns out that FreeNAS assumes that your BIOS time is UTC (as opposed to Windows, which assumes that BIOS time is local time).

So, if your timezone is GMT -5, you will find that the time FreeNAS shows is 5 hours behind the BIOS.

Searching the net, I found this page confirming my observations and sadly, there doesn't seem to be an option (at least not one I've found) that changes the behaviour of FreeNAS to read the BIOS time as local instead of UTC. Thus, I'm stuck with changing my BIOS time to match UTC, so that after FreeNAS applies the timezone offset, I'm at least at the correct time.
http://www.xpertnotes.net/freenas-9-1-system-clock-woes/

 

[dlavigne]

It can be done from the command line, but wouldn't survive a reboot/upgrade: http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/43239/freebsd-and-windows-show-different-times.

If you decide to use bugs.freenas.org to create a feature request to have this functionality added to the GUI, post the issue number here.

 

[Dusan]

Thus, I'm stuck with changing my BIOS time to match UTC, so that after FreeNAS applies the timezone offset, I'm at least at the correct time.

Why isn't this an acceptable solution? The only case I can think of where the different interpretation of the BIOS time (Windows = local, Unixes = UTC) is a problem is when you dual boot. However, dual booting FreeNAS doesn't make much sense...