Synchronizing time with Chrony

🕒 5. Synchronizing time with Chrony

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

🤖 Helpful Commands

To see the source of synchronization data.

chronyc sources

To view the current status of chrony.

chronyc tracking

🔥 Bonus Commands

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).