Because beacon chain relies on accurate times to perform attestations and produce blocks, your computer's time must be accurate to real NTP or NTS time within 0.5 seconds.
chrony is an implementation of the Network Time Protocol and helps to keep your computer's time synchronized with NTP.
Setting Up chrony
Installation
To install chrony, type:
sudo apt-get install chrony -y
To create the chrony.conf config file, copy and paste the following:
cat > $HOME/chrony.conf << EOF
pool time.google.com iburst minpoll 1 maxpoll 2 maxsources 3
pool ntp.ubuntu.com iburst minpoll 1 maxpoll 2 maxsources 3
pool us.pool.ntp.org iburst minpoll 1 maxpoll 2 maxsources 3
# This directive specify the location of the file containing ID/key pairs for
# NTP authentication.
keyfile /etc/chrony/chrony.keys
# This directive specify the file into which chronyd will store the rate
# information.
driftfile /var/lib/chrony/chrony.drift
# Uncomment the following line to turn logging on.
#log tracking measurements statistics
# Log files location.
logdir /var/log/chrony
# Stop bad estimates upsetting machine clock.
maxupdateskew 5.0
# This directive enables kernel synchronisation (every 11 minutes) of the
# real-time clock. Note that it can’t be used along with the 'rtcfile' directive.
rtcsync
# Step the system clock instead of slewing it if the adjustment is larger than
# one second, but only in the first three clock updates.
makestep 0.1 -1
EOF
Move the file to /etc/chrony/chrony.conf
sudo mv $HOME/chrony.conf /etc/chrony/chrony.conf
Restart chrony in order for config change to take effect.
sudo systemctl restart chronyd.service
To see the source of synchronization data.
chronyc sources
To view the current status of chrony.
chronyc tracking
To pick your timezone run the following command:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata
Find your region using the simple text-based GUI.
In the event that you are using national system like India's IST select:
Asia/Kolkata
This will be appropriate for all locales in the country (IST, GMT+0530).