R4.2 Time/Date/Clock Synchronization problem

General Discussion
21

What’s the output of these commands in vault?

date
qrexec-client-vm --filter-escape-chars-stderr '@default' qubes.GetDate+nanoseconds
sudo qrexec-client-vm --filter-escape-chars-stderr '@default' qubes.GetDate+nanoseconds /usr/lib/qubes/qubes-sync-clock
date
22 
$ date
qrexec-client-vm --filter-escape-chars-stderr '@default' qubes.GetDate+nanoseconds
sudo qrexec-client-vm --filter-escape-chars-stderr '@default' qubes.GetDate+nanoseconds /usr/lib/qubes/qubes-sync-clock
date
Mon Jan 22 01:01:07 CET 2024
2024-02-02T15:57:26,305349790+00:00
Fri Feb  2 16:57:26 CET 2024
23

Seems like it works fine.
Try to restart vault and check its time. Will it have correct time or not?
If not then try to run these commands:

date
sudo systemctl restart qubes-sync-time
date

The qubes-sync-time service is run on qube boot and then run periodically each 6 hours to update the qube time.
My guess is that you start vault qube before sys-net is getting the correct time from network. So vault gets wrong time at start.
Check the date/time in your BIOS, most probably you have some problem with RTC, maybe the RTC battery is dead so the hardware clock is reset of poweroff.

24

Yes it does.
I’ll put sys-net to auto boot and see where it gets me.
I’ll also keep an eye on the BIOS clock/settings.

25

Thank you so far for your help.

Bios seems to be proper. Vault updates time correctly too, so far.
It’s a little bit annoying to fire up a dispVM Firefox and having to wait 10 seconds to browse ssl sites (e.g. forum.qubes-os.org).
Further more whonix template still don’t get updates (see first post, sys-whonix is updateVM).

Any ideas on those?

gateway + workstation whonix 17 template:

% timedatectl 
               Local time: Fri 2023-11-10 00:25:52 UTC
           Universal time: Fri 2023-11-10 00:25:52 UTC
                 RTC time: n/a
                Time zone: Etc/UTC (UTC, +0000)
System clock synchronized: no
              NTP service: n/a
          RTC in local TZ: no

sys-net:

$ timedatectl 
               Local time: Sun 2024-02-04 08:39:12 CET
           Universal time: Sun 2024-02-04 07:39:12 UTC
                 RTC time: Sun 2024-02-04 07:39:12
                Time zone: Europe/Berlin (CET, +0100)
System clock synchronized: yes
              NTP service: active
          RTC in local TZ: no

sys-whonix:

% timedatectl 
               Local time: Sun 2024-02-04 07:39:10 UTC
           Universal time: Sun 2024-02-04 07:39:10 UTC
                 RTC time: n/a
                Time zone: Etc/UTC (UTC, +0000)
System clock synchronized: no
              NTP service: n/a
          RTC in local TZ: no

dom0:

$ timedatectl 
               Local time: So 2024-02-04 08:39:08 CET
           Universal time: So 2024-02-04 07:39:08 UTC
                 RTC time: So 2024-02-04 07:39:08
                Time zone: Europe/Berlin (CET, +0100)
System clock synchronized: no
              NTP service: inactive
          RTC in local TZ: no
26

Seems like some problem with sdwdate.
Check the service status in whonix dispVM:

sudo systemctl status sdwdate.service

Also check the logs in sys-whonix regarding sdwdate and check the dom0 journalctl for policy errors for your dispVM and whonix.NewStatus+status qrexec.